Death After Death PLUS 336-338

Ch. 336 - Countermeasures

The journey to return the corpses and lay them to rest took only a couple of weeks, but Simon didn’t come back until the end of summer, after the harvest, when the weather had started to turn stormy and tempestuous. Instead, after he gave his condolences and told the deceased’s loved ones about how a sudden illness had struck them down, he said his goodbyes. 

He didn’t give them the details, more than anything, because he almost wished he hadn’t known them himself. Who would want to find out that someone you loved had died like that? I’m sorry, your son had a terrible curse placed on him by a witch, and it lingered there for months before it activated, destroying his soul, he thought morosely, replaying those terrible ideas for the hundredth time. That’s right, and even though I consider myself to be a talented mage, I didn’t notice or do anything about it. 

It was depressing, but really, what was he supposed to do? Divination was inconclusive, and his glasses would barely see the marks that witches left on the skin beneath a layer or two of clothing, let alone inside their bodies. Truthfully he hadn’t even realized that layering magic inside the body by carving it into his very bones was even possible, and while he realized there might be some advantage to enchanting himself with resistance to fire or lesser strength in such a way, but he was much too focused on his current problems to experiment. 

Do I need to invent a magical X-ray to figure this out? He wondered as he considered what words might allow for that. It was troubling. 

Simon didn’t stay anywhere where anyone might expect him, not when there was someone out there who was capable of such things. Now both the capital and the places he’d already purged of witches felt dangerous. Just because he couldn’t see them didn’t mean there weren’t more of them out there. 

Instead, he stopped at the fortified mining camp that had been built near a vein he’d found in Dunwhal the previous year. He just showed up one day and started helping them with their work, and they had no reason not to be grateful rather than suspicious. The mine supervisor knew his name after all, and they were woefully behind on several tasks. Assuming he'd shown up to help rather than disappear was almost reasonable.

“We’ll never get the bridge started on time next year if we don’t start shipping ingots this year,” the man complained. “And with all the goblin raids, we’ve had a hell of a time getting the smelter finished.”

The smelter, of course, was supposed to be built in such a way that its furnaces warmed the surrounding buildings during the harsh winter, but the chaos of actual operations made that plan difficult to manage. Apparently, it had been worse in the spring when everything had turned to mud, but even now, ore was stacking up, with little melt to actually turn it into metal.

So, Simon spent a week slaughtering greenskins by night so that everyone else could work in peace. He had to do it in borrowed leather armor because he hadn’t brought his full kit with him, but it still worked well enough. Every night he set off relatively clean, and every morning he returned, drenched in blood and a few years younger than when he’d left. He’d been using so much magic lately that it had aged him, and he needed to fix that, at least a little, before the years started to become debilitating. 

Each time he returned to camp, he left a few unhealed wounds that he had bandaged where people could see to avoid any questions, but Simon wasn’t overly bothered by the fighting or the bleeding, no matter who was doing it. Rooting goblins out of their lairs had long ago become easy for him. Even the shaman he found that wielded a word of force to fling rocks at him like hail of bullets hadn’t required him to use a word of power of his own. 

More than anything, the activity had become meditative for him. The oracle would probably have preferred that he meditate while farming or painting, but he found the ebb and flow of battle with such a familiar foe to be nearly as relaxing, or at least stress relieving.

There was a certain tempo to it. Goblins were simple creatures with no more than half a dozen attacks and strategy, and moving among them, he often knew what they were going to do before they did. So, rather than worry about how many more goblin lairs there were, he focused on his problem. 

He wasn’t here to fight goblins; he was here to hide from his unknown enemy until he had some kind of solution, and that solution was slow in coming, even if it boiled down to asking himself the same few questions over and over again. Who did this? What are they after? How do I stop them before I’m next? 

They were simple questions, but no matter how much he played with pendulums or scribbled new rune combinations on his mirror in an effort to use magic to figure it out, he couldn’t figure it out. How does someone hide from magic? He wondered. That’s the better question. 

For a few days, Simon ignored his previous effort and just used magic on known targets. He could use his dowsing rod to point to Eddek from here, and even Queen Elthena, and she was half a world away. He couldn’t find the Oracle, though, or others like Helades or even his Doppelganger. Likewise, he could point to Freya, who was still safe and sound in Schwarzenbruck, but not to the evil vampire version of her that didn’t actually exist. 

What did all of that tell him? Not a lot, but it did show him that he could only find things that existed, but sometimes not even then. Helades clearly exists, but maybe not in this world, and maybe not all the time, and evil me? He sighed. Simon wasn’t even sure that his evil twin was evil anymore, and even if he was, there was no way of telling where he was. If Simon didn’t necessarily exist during every year in the world, there was no way of guaranteeing that other version of him did, too. 

“So does that mean I’m looking for the wrong thing?” he asked himself one morning after he’d finished purging a small warren of greenskins. “What if it’s not a witch at all?”

Simon wasn’t sure if that sort of distinction actually mattered. Not when he was looking for ‘the one who cursed and murdered my friends.’ Still, he kept doing experiments. He made simple sigils of warding and attached them to other men in the camp, just to see if such baubles prevented him from detecting them, and they did, mostly.

It actually surprised him how easily it was to hide someone from magic. Both Dnarth Karesh and Uuvellum Karesh seemed to work, but in slightly different ways. The former were the words of hide location, so the miner he’d attached them to disappeared entirely from Simon’s spells unless he used a major word to circumvent the simple charm. The latter were the words of anti-location; they didn’t hide the mason that Simon put them on. They gave him false information. The former made the man almost invisible, and the latter was more of a signal jammer. 

Although they were both interesting, neither of them seemed to be what was happening here, because even major words didn’t reveal his hidden enemy. What if they’re a god or a demon? He wondered. What if they aren’t a witch, but something the witches worship? That thought disturbed him, and he spent several more days thinking about it. 

More than anything, he wished he could talk to someone about all of this. He tried having whispered conversations with the mirror a few times, but it made no effort to defend or attack any of Simon’s precepts or ideas. The most it would do was agree or disagree with information he’d previously logged inside of it already, which meant that he was still just arguing with himself, with extra steps. 

He cast a number of spells trying to determine how involved demons were with witches, with mixed results. He’d seen it with his own eyes, of course, but that was only on a single occasion. 

In the end, when he was out of goblins to kill, he took a bit of the newly mined tin and mixed it with a few copper coins he had on him to create a little bronze. Then he hammered and polished part of that into a ring. He told the mining camp’s smith that it was just something to practice on, but that was just an excuse to get him a few pointers, and help he didn’t really need instead of the wrong sort of interest. 

“A ring’s not such a simple project,” the gruff old man told him. “Better to start with shoes or nails. They’re much more forgiving.”

When all of that was done, he scribed a rune of nullification into its inner surface. While Simon experimented with lesser countermeasures around the word of location, neither of them seemed good enough for the risk he faced. I still might have a ticking time bomb inside me already, he thought nearly every night before bed. That, more than anything else, made the decisions easy for him.

He couldn’t find his enemy, but he could make their job as hard as possible, especially when words like soul destruction were being evoked. Unfortunately, while a word of nullification placed him beyond the reach of divination magic, it also put him beyond the reach of the rest of magic as well. He could not heal himself or strike down others. He couldn’t pry into the truth of their words or even use the powers embedded into his blade without taking it off first. As long as he wore it, he was just another man.

I wonder if I can even pass through one of Healdes’ portals with this on? He asked himself as he looked at his hand while he rode down the trail toward Adonan. It would certainly pass through if he took it off and it was unpowered, but he didn’t know if her magic worked on the same principles or not; he didn’t know enough to say either way, but now that he’d thought of it, he looked forward to finding out. 

While he didn’t think that the ring would save him from fire or lightning that had been generated by magic and then flung at him, he was sure that it would keep someone from setting him on fire or being marked by a witch. More importantly, though, it should keep any marks that might already be hidden inside of him from activating, no matter what their conditions were. 

Ch. 337 - A Little Too Quiet

When Simon returned to the capital, the most common reaction was surprise. Some, including the remaining acolytes of Dionia, assumed that he’d perished from the same curse he’d seen previously. “You wouldn’t be the only one,” a fresh-faced boy explained. He’d been just another acolyte a few months ago, and the fact that he was their high priest now meant that everyone above him was no more. “Many have suffered for the curse that’s been placed upon our temple.”

That angered Simon, and while he vowed to do something about that,  it was the other group he felt bad about. They included Eddek, Kayla, and all the other friends, and most of his business associates. They assumed that he’d finally had enough of the country’s politics and left for greener pastures. Most of them were happy to see him; only a few creditors who had looked forward to not having to pay him were less so, but Simon didn’t care much about money these days. 

“I just stopped to help some people in need and try to figure out some things,” Simon explained to Kayla when she made it very clear how angry she was that he’d abandoned them. 

“Be that as it may, you could have said something!” she protested. When he tried to point out that he hadn’t known he’d be gone so long, she insisted he could have sent a letter, which was ironic, given that she was only barely literate. 

Ironically, out of everything, it was his printing press that was doing best of all. That didn’t mean that it was making him the most money, because it only ever cost him money. It was just the farthest ahead of schedule. Not only were they printing so quickly they’d almost run out of pages, and caught up entirely on the block prints, but they were sewing the various chapters into signatures, and stacking those up for the day when they would become full-fledged books. 

His workers on that project had started for the pay, but after they saw his vision beginning to materialize, they’d become true devotees to what he was doing. Even in Simon’s absence, a zeal had developed that he would have described as nearly religious. They no longer seemed to care whether he was an outsider; they certainly didn’t care why he’d been gone for so long as long as he was back. 

“Did you bring more pages?” the foreman asked when he returned, before he’d even finished getting an update about everything else. “We expected that you’d have something new when you returned.”

“It’s all I’ve thought about,” Simon lied. “I’ve seen plenty of new things to inspire me along the way, and you’ll have more words to set soon.” That part wasn’t a lie, but it would take days to complete. Since he’d finished the ABCs and the myths and legends, he’d be getting into history and the basics of laws and math, and even though he’d already done all of the research he needed on the topics, finding clever ways to weave all of that together would be tedious. 

Other than hunt for his enemy, that was really all that Simon did until the snows started. He worked clever word games into historical events, turned some of the most important laws into nursery rhymes and memorable sayings, and in general, did his very best to make other parts of Charian culture as interesting as the bloodsport that was their legal system. While he would never succeed in that, he did his best, and even if his illustrations did the heavy lifting, he felt like he'd come a long way. 

“When this is done, history and law will no longer be the domain of Karls and their sons alone,” Simon declared as his foreman took the manuscript and started to read it. 

“That’s the least of it,” the man answered, before waxing about identity and belief. He used clumsier words as he compared Simon’s book to a hymnal, but when he declared that “when every clanhold has read from it we will all sing together,” Simon realized he probably should add a few songs to it. 

He’d need help for that, of course. He was a rank amateur when it came to instruments or singing, and he knew nothing of musical notation, but in a city of this size, there would be many skalds and other entertainers who could help him with that. 

He was in the midst of a conversation about that just a few days later with a few men at a local common room, when he received the last invitation he would have expected. Simon was sitting there, in front of a roaring hearth while the snow fell outside, and he bought drinks for a few of the locals while they debated which songs weren’t just the most widely known, but the most important to their people. 

Simon listened a lot more than he talked; while he might have been able to join such a conversation about potters in Ionia or historians and philosophers in Brin, here he was out of his depth. That meant he was more than happy to pay for an education with as much mead as it took to drown the skald that had been entertaining them, along with a few of the most entertaining patrons. That was when he noticed the messenger waiting respectfully in his field of view without joining the conversation. He didn’t approach Simon until he was beckoned for, earning himself a tip in the process. 

“What’cha got there?” the skald asked as Simon broke the green wax seal of clan Himar and opened the scroll.

“An invitation to a Yule feast, apparently,” Simon answered. 

He wasn’t surprised by that; this time of year, such things were common. He was surprised only by its sender. It had been years since he’d had it out with them over their treatment of his charge, but in all this time, they’d never seen fit to try to mend fences. That hadn’t changed, no matter how rich he was making their allies and enemies. Now suddenly they wanted to talk to him, and in such a public way?

Simon set the issue aside for now and promised the messenger he would send a response, but he couldn’t do that until he talked to Eddek. Though he didn’t spend much time with the boy anymore, he spent time with their scions daily. If there was anything to hear, then he would have heard something. 

Eddek's response was the opposite of knowledgeable, though. It was pure surprise. “Really? I thought they’d never want to see you again. While they still aren’t happy with clan Eddek, you’re an entirely different story.”

The boy explained several recent incidents where Simon had been used as the butt of a joke. It was the first time in ages that he’d heard anyone refer to him as a hapless outsider, and he smiled along as the schoolyard jibes strengthened his resolve. 

If this is the worst they have to say about me, then whatever happened is water under the bridge, Simon assured himself, and whatever they want is something new. 

The invitation didn’t say what that was, no matter how much he reread its spare sentences. Even when he responded that he would attend, and asked what the purpose of his invitation was, the only answer he got was a very brief, ‘matters of mutual interest, and putting an end to past unpleasantness.’

While that was cryptic, it was promising, so Simon decided to put his best forward. Clan Himar represented one of the only major clans in the city that he hadn’t done some kind of business with. He even had a few finds on their land to offer them if they could come to terms; really, anything to mend fences would help his efforts to tie the nascent nation together a little tighter so that they could stand against the Murani, and any future dangers they might face together. 

When Yule night finally arrived weeks later, Simon attended in his best outfit of winter furs and a fine wool tunic beneath. Between the way he dressed and his well-trimmed beard, the average person he passed in the street no longer recognized him as a foreigner. The only real giveaway was that he wore no clan patterns, though he sometimes thought of changing that; he worried it would alienate some families if he tried to found clan Jackoby as an outsider. 

That and just thinking about the name feels weird, he thought as the snow crunched beneath his boots. Technically, he still had a last name, but he used it so rarely that it felt like it belonged to someone else. 

Clanless or not, Simon made every effort to get into clan Himar’s good graces when he showed up that night. He even brought a copy of his book for the clan to review; it wasn’t finished yet, but every section he included in this leather-bound copy was, which made it look almost as professional as he did. 

Though his entrance earned him some looks and a few people chose to walk away rather than shake his hand once he’d introduced himself, it was friendly enough. Clan Himar’s wealth was on full display tonight of all nights, and no matter how many well-heeled guests they invited, there was always more food and drink for them. 

So, for every person that wanted nothing to do with Simon, there were two or three more who wanted to talk to him, and before the bell for dinner was rung, he was fairly mobbed by people who asked him questions about everything from Brin to paper making. 

In a show of goodwill, Simon was seated at the left hand of the Karl, only two down from the man himself. Though women ate in another room so men could talk, there were plenty of attractive young women to serve them each of the extravagant courses. 

Unfortunately, each course came with its own drink, and though they were delicious, Simon was well on his way to getting drunk by the meal’s third course of squash soup and spiced croutons. Normally, he would have fixed that with a word of lesser clearing, but these days, he didn’t take off his ring without good reason. 

That made conversation harder, but not exactly difficult, as he did his best to stick to safe, well-worn topics for the most part. “And your book?” the Karl asked eventually, throwing that strategy out the window. “Have you finished it yet?”

“Soon,” Simon agreed, smiling as he realized the man didn’t even notice the gift he’d left for him earlier; had he seen it, he never would have asked the question. It was plain that the Karl didn’t care about him, which made it an open question as to whether or not this would eventually resolve into vengeance or violence. 

Neither his host nor any of the other Karls seemed to be in a hurry to get there, though, and course after course passed by without quite resolving into either. The closest it ever came were questions about his paper mill or one of the bridges he was trying to finance. One of the men to his left joked that it was very strange that none of Simon’s projects had much to do with each other, but Simon merely shook his head ruefully. 

“Everything is connected, don’t you see?” The bridges will use lumber, at least for now, and all the waste wood from that will be ground down, combined with rags, and then turned into paper to become books. Nothing is wasted.”

“You say for now,” a red-haired Karl added, “What do you plan to make them with later? Paper?” That caused a wave of uproarious laughter, and Simon smiled along as several older, and presumably wiser men than he explained to him the vast difference between pictures of bridges and bridges themselves. 

In that moment, Simon considered explaining his plans for a blast furnace and how cheap he expected iron ore to become now that several mines were opening up. He thought about going on to explain how they could use paths of steel to cross some canyons quicker and easier than any rope or timber bridge. 

In the end, though, he decided against it. Though he knew it could be done because of his life on Earth, his own personal designs were still far from complete, and he didn’t wish to open a new avenue for ridicule. He would save that for later. So, instead, he endured it, trading jokes, and eventually, the east was at an end. 

At least he thought. When Simon started to rise, his host, Karl Himar, said, “Stay a little longer, there’s one more matter you and I have to discuss, in private.” 

Despite the Karl’s neutral facial expression, his words felt ominous, but as the rest of the men emptied from the room, Simon didn’t feel the need to retreat with them. He’d come all this way. He might as well hear what the man had to say. 

Ch. 338 - A Little Too Quiet (part 2)

When most of the guests had left, the Karl turned to Simon and said, “You know, I didn’t think you’d actually come, even with the invitation, but you did.” as he smiled coldly.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Simon asked. Pointedly ignoring the door as it slammed shut behind the retreating guests. “I’m always happy to leave the past in the past for the right opportunity.”

“Just another reason you’ll always be an outsider,” the Karl answered with a cold smile. “A true son of the mountains carries all of that past with him, and builds upon it, generation by generation.”

While Simon was used to the man’s humor and disdain, this felt different. His words might not be a direct threat. Even if they were, though, Simon wasn’t exactly in any danger. The Karl might be a big man, but he was old, and besides him and two pairs of guards who stood at the far doors at either end of the hall, there was only a single maid who was starting to stack dishes for removal. Still, something felt off, but Simon decided to play along.

“What was I supposed to do, then?” Simon asked. “Ignore the invitation? Continue our feud in perpetuity, all based on a slight misunderstanding?”

“You couldn’t do that, could you? It’s not in your nature.” Karl Himar said as he stood and stretched before going over to the far wall and studying some of the weapons that were mounted on it. For a moment, Simon was reminded of the way that the rebels used similar weapons to murder the nobles in Kayla’s bloody masquerade at some point in the future. “I’ll bet you even thought this was a trap, but still came anyway?”

“Is this a trap? Should I be worried?” Simon asked, not bothering to rise as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He hadn’t brought a sword with him, but he need only remove his ring to become a weapon himself. “I’m hardly defenseless. I’ve already cut your champion down once. I can do so again.”

“You probably think the smart thing to do would be to come to some agreement and build some venture together. You’ve already got plenty of books and bridges. Maybe bricks would be your next step?” the man answered peevishly as he picked up a heavily notched great axe and studied its edge. “That would make sense to a man like you who doesn’t truly understand honor.”

Simon opened his mouth, as much to crack a joke as to protest, but the Karl continued, talking right over him. “But then you think the rules of hospitality protect you now that you’ve eaten from my table, so clearly, you understand nothing at all.”

Even as Simon’s mind tried to figure out what the man’s point was, legally speaking, the Karl pivoted and threw the axe, sending it whirling end over end with more force than Simon would have expected from the old man. That was his second clue that something wasn’t as it seemed, but he didn’t have time to think about that either. 

Rather than think, he kicked over the chair, falling beneath the arc of the axe and causing it to embed in the wall behind where he’d been sitting instead of deep into his ribcage.  

As Simon spilled from the chair, he rolled with it and was on his feet again, almost as soon as the danger was passed. As he did so, he reached for his weapon even though he knew he wasn’t belted on, and the Karl continued. “The rules of hospitality only protect our people from each other. That’s true of a great many things in this world that you clearly know nothing about.”

Simon cursed the force of habit and looked to his left and right, noting that the guards were all moving toward him with their spears and shields. This was certainly a trap, and he would clearly be surrounded very soon. He wasn’t worried. With a word, he could behead all of them once they got close enough. 

As he removed the ring that was crippling him, he said, “All I want to do is help people. Everyone I’ve worked with has benefited; I suppose Clan Himar will have to be the notable exception to that.”

“Benefited? Even the daughters of Sybil?” the Karl laughed, apparently entirely unafraid. “You’ve destroyed so much that you don’t understand, and now her mark will destroy your very soul!”

As he gloated, the maid who was standing down the table from the growing confrontation pursed her lips in anger. A normal maid would have already run screaming, so the fact that she merely stood there and watched was enough to tell him she was involved. The fact that Karl Himar had clearly said enough to annoy her, though, well, that was enough to move her from involved to dangerous. 

Did I have this all wrong? Was she the witch I’ve been looking for this whole time? He asked himself as he raised his hand to his neck. He didn’t know, but she’d be a fine lead for him to try to track her down in another life. 

Even as she opened her mouth to cast something awful, and the Karl’s idiot smile widened that much more, Simon’s hand closed around his necklace. He didn’t hesitate. He could already feel something shifting inside of him, even in that moment. Rather than trying to slip the ring back on or even trying to strike her down, he reached up and gripped the gold chain around his neck. Then he yanked it hard enough to draw blood as the links broke, activating it in the process. 

It was a small, biting pain, and it covered the complete lack of sensation caused by the invisible guillotine that sliced his head clean off. With that, all sensation with his body was lost, but strangely, his consciousness continued for another moment or two. He had just enough time to feel his soul start to fracture under the strain of the magic that had been used on him as the world burst violently into flame around him, lighting the table, the tapestries, and even the guards that stood nearby him on fire. Then his head rolled to a stop on the floor, and the world faded to black. 

Normally, death was a fairly instantaneous thing. Simon seemed to recall that he’d had a few brushes with the dark that lasted longer than others, but just now he couldn’t really remember them. His mind was hazy, and all he could do was float there in the void, wondering why he was still wracked with pain instead of feeling the familiar sensation of the lumpy bed beneath him. 

It occurred to him only belatedly that he might well be lying in the bed, though, because even after the pain faded, it was followed only by numbness. How much damage did that spell do before death took me? He wondered. 

Simon spent a moment pondering that. He remembered who he was and where he was. He remembered his last life, and the lives before that, more or less. He could even recite all eighteen words of power that he knew in alphabetical order. Clearly, whoever Sibyl was, she hadn’t done too much damage to him, and yet here he was, stuck in limbo. It was troubling. 

Had he ever had a death quite like this, where he was stuck between lives? Had the soul damage broken Heledes reality knot? The very last thing he wanted to do was escape the Pit like that. He did not want to be sent back to her antechamber and offered another life as a sloth or a red panda. 

Eventually, as Simon hung there in the dark, he decided the most likely answer was that he wasn’t trapped between lives, but within his own body. That witch’s spell didn’t have the chance to lobotomize me, he reasoned, but she did break something important. 

It was a little terrifying to contemplate. Given the nature of the pit, if he was a coma patient lying in his cabin, he’d stay that way forever. If he really had become nothing but a vegetable, then he was doomed to lie here until he wasted away, died, and repeated the process. 

If she’d succeeded, then the same would have happened, but I wouldn’t know, because there’d be no mind or soul to experience it, he realized. 

Simon allowed himself a moment of self-pity. He’d contemplated how many heroes of the pit might be statues or zombies before. He’d even wondered how many of them might have accidentally slipped into hell, never to return, but how many might have been permanently crippled by magic in a way that made death eternal? That was a fresh hell that he wished he’d never discovered. 

Eventually, though, that self-pity gave way to determination. If he really was stuck inside his own body instead of lost in a void of eternal darkness, finding some way to reconnect with himself should be possible, shouldn’t it? It’s not that I’m stuck in my own body, doomed to die forever, he told himself. It’s that I’ve got as many opportunities as it takes to fix this. 

With that thought in mind, he set about trying to force a connection with something, then, when that didn’t work, he just floated there, grasping for the faintest sensations, anything to prove that he wasn’t crazy. 

Simon had no way of knowing how long he lay there in limbo, but the first sensation he noticed wasn’t touch. It was hunger, followed eventually by thirst. The dead felt neither of those things, so that proved to him that he wasn’t actually dead, but still he couldn’t feel his fingers or his toes. During his experiments to bridge that gap, he would have given a great deal for a sword to be pierced right through him as it had when he’d been entombed as a vampire; such a sharp sensation would have anchored him, while the other, hazier sensations only slowly drove him crazy. 

The hunger and thirst came in waves. Sometimes they were almost unendurable, and other times they were entirely absent, but Simon could do nothing to address them as he tried to imagine his body in minute detail as he imagined opening his eyes. 

He pictured the skin, the eyelashes, the eye itself, and even the small muscles responsible for the movement. He did the same for the timber ceiling that must be above his head. The latter image was one of the scenes he was most familiar with in the whole world, and he had no trouble painting every knot hole and detail of the woodgrain in his mind's eye. 

Still, it was a long time before he actually managed to make it real. How long was a long time? He had no way of knowing, but if each wave of unendurable thirst had been the end of one life, and each new wave of peaceful numbness had been the start of a new one, he’d been at this for weeks and died several times. Finally, though, all of that paid off when he managed to open his eyes and see the thing that he’d been trying to look at so hard. 

Above him hung the ceiling of his simple cabin, not in the bright colors of morning light, but in the dull colors of sunset. That was the reason he knew it was real; he rarely looked at it unless he was waking up or going to sleep, so this was an unexpected view for him. 

What was more unexpected was what happened the following morning. Simon spent the whole night struggling to move even the smallest finger on his hand or feel the bed that he was lying on, but he was entirely unsuccessful. He could blink, with great effort, but he couldn’t even force himself to breathe deeply. Instead, his body took only the shallowest of breaths, minutely altering the angle of his head with each cycle. 

Sometimes he thought he felt something, though he might have imagined it, and other times he could see the results of one of his muscles twitching from his point of view, even though he couldn’t see which muscle, or if he’d had anything to do with it. Still, even those moments felt like progress. 

In the morning, though, after a night of sporadic sleeping, he was surprised to find that he wasn’t alone. His eyes flew open at the sound of his door opening. He thought it was a goblin about to rip out his throat, but it was someone far more familiar: his doppelganger. 

“Rough night?” the other Simon asked him with a smile, looking about how he would have expected the other man to look. While Simon was still stuck in the fat body he started with, his twin was wearing a thirty-something version of his face that he would have considered normal. 

Rather than wait for a response, he continued, as he lifted Simon up and started to manipulate his body. “I know you’re probably freaking out right now, but just try to stay calm. It’s going to be okay.”

Easy for you to say, Simon yelled silently. He might not be able to feel his body, but every part of his mind was in fight or flight mode right now at the idea that he was completely in the power of a stranger wearing his face. 

“This is the first time we've met, actually,” his doppelganger explained while he propped Simon up against the wall. “Not for you, but for me. Soul damage is an ugly thing; you should avoid it whenever possible.”

Simon wanted to open his mouth to ask a question, but that was quite impossible; he could barely blink his eyes. When his doppelganger poured water into his mouth from a skin, Simon wouldn’t have been able to spit it out even if it was poison. 

“I know you probably think you’re screwed to relive this moment for years or decades,” the doppelganger told him, giving voice to his secret fear. “But it’s going to be fine. A few days… maybe a week or two, and you’ll be back to normal.”

Simon wanted to ask how anyone could possibly know that, but he just lay there as his clone turned away to rearrange the large mirror that was so familiar and hang it on the wall directly in front of Simon, so it was all he could look at.

Then, as he started to draw on the mirror, he said, “You’ve learned a lot about magic, and you use the mirror a lot, am I right? Well, I’m betting you’ve got a lot more to learn about mirrors and magic both, but this one in particular. This spot… this place… this mirror, this is the focal point of Helades' magic, and just this once we’re going to use it to fix you up. Sound good?”

Simon watched his copy trace out a series of fairly complicated runes, Barom Weylera Meiren Delzam Eszloum, and as they twisted together and began to glow, Simon translated them roughly as ‘a vision of a repeated life to repair the soul.’ Simon barely had a chance to marvel at the elegance with which his copy drew them freehand as he somehow managed to make the complex five-part symbol flow together in such a way that it might have been one complex glyph all along. He also had only a moment to wonder what that might have meant, then the mirror sprang to life and began to glow, even as the glowing words of power that activated it vanished.