Death After Death PLUS 309-311

Ch. 309 - Uprooted

After over a decade and a half in Ordanvale, Simon finally decided to leave and journey south to see the Oracle in her mountain-top city. He wasn’t looking forward to explaining who he was again for the third time, but he had to; it was the only place where he was likely to get answers about what he was experiencing. 

The strange swirling about him had eventually calmed down, but his vision only kept getting stronger. Sometimes, on a particularly clear day, he felt like he could look right into people’s souls. 

Before he could do that, though, he said his goodbyes and destroyed or hid everything that was likely to cause problems in the future. That announcement triggered shock throughout the community and an outpouring of well-wishes. 

First and foremost, that meant a number of parties that he was all but required to attend. Simon didn’t begrudge the people he’d come to know so well that. That was only fair; he was about to vanish from their lives forever, and some people took that harder than others. 

He’d become a pillar of the community. Truthfully, it didn’t even look the same as when he’d found it. He’d found a place that was frightened and scorched, and was leaving behind somewhere with whitewashed walls, gardens, and art. The Earl might take the credit for all of that, but he knew who was really responsible. 

If only someone did this to every struggling community in the whole world, it would be a better place for everyone, Simon thought as he did a watercolor sketch of Ordanvale in his journal one last time so he’d have something to remember it by for as long as this life lasted. He wondered how many lifetimes it would take for him to fix all of the problems himself, but dismissed the thought almost immediately.

It would be easier to clear level 99 than to do that. He told himself.

Between the social and logistical entanglements, it took weeks from the time he’d made his decision, but he wasn’t in any great hurry. Simon was a rich man, even if nobody knew it. If he’d been smarter when he’d started, he would have built himself a crypt or something somewhere and shoved hundreds of pounds of silver into one convenient location. 

As it was, though, his wealth was hidden in half a dozen large chests buried near landmarks not far from the trade roads that ran through the area. They’d be easy enough for him to access in the future. For now he was more concerned about all the magical trinkets he’d made over the years.

Although he didn’t want to destroy his loyal dousing rod or the collection of wands he’d crafted, he certainly didn’t want them to fall into the hands of others, which was the primary vector that seemed to create warlocks. It didn’t take much for some people to go mad with power, and he could imagine what a single lightning wand might do in such cases. 

Well, I don’t exactly have to imagine, now do I? He thought as he walked south. Simon had seen what goblins and orcs could do with a single spell; humans were no different in that regard. 

Last year, he’d even heard from a traveler about fighting goblins who wielded fire in the same way he’d seen before. Simon was tempted to go hunt the little bugger down and try to get some answers, but he decided against it. This life was about Ionar’s eruption, and increasingly about keeping his mind clear and focused; he could kill more goblins next time. 

Simon still had several years until Mount Karkosia blew, and beyond the orb, the armor, and the weapon he’d created for the occasion, he needed very little. He was going to go take care of this one job, and then he was going to press deeper into the Pit, and begin methodically eliminating levels one at a time. 

While he walked, he thought about that a lot. He felt the pang of regret that he’d been denied the opportunity to escort Kaylee and Eddek where they were going, and he wondered what the vampire level would contain now that Freya was no longer part of the equation. He had a million questions that weren’t just unanswered; they were unanswerable, at least until he got there. Still, the fact that he would was never in any doubt.

The only question that really nagged at him now, beyond the evolution of his sight, was which of the two mutually exclusive powers was more beneficial. Was it better to be able to command the forces of the universe with a word, or was it better to see how everything fit together?

It was hard to say, but the longer he walked, and the more he thought about it, the more he was reminded of some of the riddles the Oracle had given him in his last life. The more he knew, the better he could change things; his knowledge was imperfect, but it was still more surgical. 

Of course, as always, his reflections on these deeper topics were interrupted. He was attacked one night by dirty, hungry-looking men one night while he roasted some sausages over a small fire. Simon offered to share, but it was clear from the first moment that he glimpsed their greasy souls that this would end in bloodshed. 

His new sight hadn’t warned him that they were coming, but it did reveal the man hiding in the bushes with a bow. He could see it by the threads that connected the mangy gang as much as the nervous glances over their shoulder. 

Simon was tempted to smite him down from a distance, but his wand of force that he could use as a sniper rifle as easily as a scalpel or a battering ram was packed away. So, instead, he merely kept trees and opponents between them, and then, when everyone else was dealt with, Simon prowled the long way around, tracking his fleeing footprints as they wove through the trees before running him down like a dog. 

It was his first cold-blooded murder in a long time, but he didn’t even feel bad about it. He’d been a leader too afraid to charge with his men, an assassin in the shadows, and ultimately, a coward who’d fled the field when all was lost. Simon felt nothing at all about butchering him. 

At least, not until he noticed how much muddier those deaths had made his view of the world around him. That was irksome. 

There were other bandits during his trek south, as well as goblins and other monsters. Simon could see these coming thanks to the shadows over certain woods, but he avoided those whenever possible. He was trying to see the world right now, not change it, and while slaughtering the bandits hadn’t hurt his experience numbers at all, they had muddled his vision. 

He could still see the auras and the threads, but the subtle colors and the nuance were gone, and it took time for it to start to come back. Just one more experiment I need to perform, Simon said to himself as he moved ever closer to the dry Raiden Mountains before him. 

There, he didn’t always have the chance to avoid violence, even if he wanted to. The beastmen were too numerous for that. This trip, he stuck to the highlands as much as possible to minimize those encounters, which led to a close encounter with a giant bird of prey, which he avoided, and a nest of living harpies for the first time. 

That surprised Simon. After all the searching he’d done, he’d thought they were extinct, but nature apparently found a way even if you were an ugly bird woman who smelled like shit. The roc or giant eagle or whatever it was, he avoided, but the harpies he slew. That was much because of their proximity to a well-used trade road as because of their ugly, vicious natures. 

They even called out insults that sounded remarkably similar to Ionian speech as they attacked and died. While he was slightly conflicted about killing the only harpies he’d ever actually seen, he didn’t feel at all bad about letting the giant bird live instead of shooting it down. It would have been a shame to kill something so majestic. 

He meditated on how arbitrary that distinction was as he made detailed sketches of the harpy corpses and saved a few feathers in his journal. He planned to minimize his contact with Elthena, but given that the portal was in her throne room, that was probably impossible. So, if he was going to see her anyway, he planned to let her know that harpies basically didn’t exist anymore. 

“Maybe she won’t marry me,” he grumbled, “But maybe she’ll settle down with the next guy instead. It would be a shame for her not to be a mom.”

Truthfully, her existence no longer made his heart ache. It was their son, Seyom, and his lack of existence that did. He’d become such a fine man, and through Simon’s actions, he’d never been born. That killed Simon long after everything else from his life in Ionia had faded to dust.

Simon mourned him for the dozenth time as he started hiking again, and left the harpy carcasses to rot in the sun. While his trip through the mountains was bloody, his hike to the top of Mount Elian was as sedate as always. 

This time, he didn’t stay with the monks at the base of the hill. He didn’t need their help, or even their supplies, not when a hot bath and a warm meal were waiting for him at the top of the mountain. It took several days to make the climb by the road as it usually did, but every night that familiar lair of clouds got a little closer.

When he reached the top, he found the same woman he’d seen on his first journey here. What was her name? He wondered as he approached the gate. Diara? Diana? Something like that. She was among the youngest of the white robed priestesses. He knew that because she was only a teenager when he’d been here last. Simon tried to think about how old that would make Zoa as he struggled to figure out what to say, but before he could say anything at all, the woman said, “There you are, Simon. You have returned to us at last.”

“I… you know me?” he asked as he experienced a wave of déjà vu. 

“Of course,” she smiled. “You might not remember me, of course, I’m Diara. I’ve grown quite a bit since you’ve been away.”

“Since I’ve been away?” Simon asked dumbly. “How long have I been away?”

“Four? No, five years, I think?” she smiled, “I’m not sure, but I’ll bet Zoa knows down to the day.”

“She does?” Simon asked as his head continued to spin. Why does anyone remember me? What is going on? That’s not how this is supposed to work. 

In response to that, Diara laughed uncertainly. “Of course she does. She’s been pining for you this whole time… well, maybe not pining. In fact, maybe don’t tell her I said that.”

Ch. 310 - Wheels Within Wheels

Simon was only given a few minutes to put all of this together before he was brought face-to-face with the woman he thought he’d lost a lifetime ago. Still, in that time, he put it together. I was on the same level then as I am now, he realized. Somehow, it’s not just my actions that are sticking around now. Somehow, it’s me. There are at least two of me in this world right now. Maybe more, depending on what’s happening on which level. There might even be four or five of me if things overlap right. 

The realization hurt his brain, and as he hugged the beautiful woman he’d abandoned decades ago, all he could think about was where he might be in previous runs in that moment. She’d gotten only a little older in that time, but he’d gotten a bit younger. 

Neither of those facts mattered as much as the details of his current predicament. He was on level zero, as he had been the last time he’d come here. He’d presumed that it would reset like all of the other levels, but it didn’t seem to be the case, and the implications were unsettling. What I’m doing now can’t be undone. 

He kissed her then, as much to distract himself as because it would have been too cruel not to. As he did so, he tried to will his sight to tell him more than just the faint aura that told him she was a good person. He didn’t need any gifts to see that on his smiling face. Between his recent violence and his current uncertainty, his soul churned, and the world offered him no insight.

After that, as he was given robes to change into that were lighter than the ones he’d worn when he left, they went and shared dinner together in the commons. There, he was greeted by any number of old friends who had become near strangers in his long absence. He’d cared deeply for some of these people, but while he smiled at them, they’d been reduced to names and faces in the interim.

Simon had thought that returning to Hepollyon would feel like coming home in its way, but it felt more like the Twilight Zone. In some small way, he felt like he was the evil Simon now, impinging on the life of his old self, and no matter how many pleasantries he exchanged with other acolytes, that thought never left his mind. He’d revisited versions of his previous lives, but never like this. 

What about Elthena? His mind argued. That was exactly like this. You finished a life and came back to it. 

That was true, but the difference here was that he hadn’t been expecting it. That time, he’d worked and planned around a number of events. The level had been locked in, but… Well, he was locking in a lot of things right now, for better or worse, and as soon as he had some time, he was going to have to review some of his past lives and make some notes about where he could and could not go on level zero.

Still, things only got more awkward as the day wore on, and Zoa tried to do more than just kiss him that evening, he resisted, which wouldn’t have gone any worse if he’d slapped his former lover across her face. 

“Aren’t you attracted to me anymore?” she asked. 

“It’s not that,” Simon explained. “It's just that I’ve been gone for so long. I want to reconnect and remember who you are to me first.”

That placated her somewhat, but it created resentment, too. He could see it in the tiny but growing distance building between them.

It wasn’t even a lie, but there was no way to explain the whole truth to her. She wasn’t the shrewd woman that Elthana was, and the gray robes she peeled off before snuggling against him told him just how far she was from accepting such revelations; she had yet to approach any sort of enlightenment that could let her view the wider world that he lived in.

Still, he told her some things because it would have seemed strange to tell her nothing at all. He told her of his trip north and the city of Zurari. He left out that he’d toppled the pyramids when he told her about those. Instead, he told her about the bazaars and the food. He dazzled her with strange details, which did as much to calm her as it did to distract his racing mind from the fact that he was somehow in the same life he’d left behind. 

That shouldn’t be possible, his mind argued. It had calmed somewhat over the course of the conversation. Sharing the mundane details of his adventures had allowed his vision to sharpen and see the pinks of love and kindness that tinged her aura. 

He was just getting to the horse clans and the giant’s footprint he found when the priest came for him near midnight. Zoe didn’t try to stop him. Instead, she only whispered, “Come back to me,” as he dressed and left.

He met the Oracle by the lake again, just as he had last time, though when she saw him, she said, “You’re looking quite a bit brighter than when I last saw you, Simon.”

For a moment, he couldn’t answer her because he was too distracted by the lights and patterns he saw around her. She was as dazzling as the sun, and even when he looked away, he was half-blinded by her, but the lines were the most interesting part of the light show. 

He’d long since grown used to those at the peripheries of his vision. He could see the way that friends, family, and even co-conspirators were linked to each other. Around the Oracle, the lines were thick and braided, indicating their strength and importance. They were multicolored, which told him just how varied those connections were, but stranger than all of those things was the fact that almost none of them actually touched the woman. Instead, they interwove with each other, leaving her in the center, untouched, like she commanded a vast tapestry but was not actually part of it. 

“It’s been a while,” he answered finally, after the pause stretched just a little too long, making it awkward. “Longer than you know.”

“Oh, I know you are not the same Simon who left us years ago,” she answered. He could hear her smile, but hidden by her veil, he couldn’t see it. 

“How, though, is it my aura or—” he started to ask. If he could see so much in her outlines now, then he was sure she could read him like a book.

“Because until very recently that Simon still lived and breathed,” she answered. “Unfortunately, he perished in the collapse of a rather large temple a couple of years ago, and yet here you are. What am I supposed to make of that?”

“I think you know,” Simon agreed, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of that answer first. “I’m sure that two Simons muddies your waters that much more than one.”

“Oh, there’s rarely even two or three,” she answered with a shake of her head, sounding faintly annoyed. “You churn up the world more than you realize, I think.”

The answer surprised him, but he doubted he’d get any more on the subject from her, so he pressed on. “I didn’t come here to debate the ethics of what it is I’m doing. I feel pretty good about stopping a wave of zombies and death and taking care of the Magi. Well, I think I set them back long enough to ensure peace and—”

“The things you did to stop the zombies made the world a better place. I’ll admit that, but not for the reasons you think,” she said, smoothing her robes before turning to look out into the world at something only she could see. He was pretty sure that she gazed toward Schwarzenbruck, though he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure at night. “As to the Murani, you’ve only exacerbated that situation, I’m afraid.”

“What?” Simon asked, surprised. “How? I shattered their school. That has to set them back a good long way from whatever war preparations were brewing.”

“It does,” the Oracle agreed, not bothering to turn back to him as he faced north. “They will not attack the south until years later than they otherwise would have, but when they do, it will be even more vicious than before.”

“Then I’ll stop them again if I have to,” Simon said, trying hard to keep his thoughts on the conversation and not the light show that surrounded her.

“You probably will,” she answered wearily, turning to look him over from head to toe. “But did you ever think that maybe the future had already been laid out for things to happen in a certain way? Perhaps it might be better for the world and the people in it if they were fought now and not then.”

“Wait, are you saying that you already set things up so—” Simon started to ask. 

“Not me,” she quickly corrected him.

“Well, it can be Hel… the Goddess. She wants me to change things,” Simon reasoned. “So who? The Murani’s God King?”

“The God King?” she laughed. “I think not.” Simon was about to ask about that reaction, but she continued. “Someday, you’ll find that very funny, though I don’t think you’ll find out just now.”

“So who?” he asked. 

“That’s not your question,” she countered, “Or even the reason you’re here.”

He was torn on whether or not to push for that point, but instead, he decided to return to the topic at hand. “I’m here because my vision has gotten so much stronger… Because I’ve gained so much more clarity in this last life. I need help understanding what it is I’m seeing.”

“You do,” she agreed, “But that’s not why you’re here.”

“It isn’t?” Simon asked, giving it some thought before he continued. “Well, I suppose that desire started because I wanted to talk about the whorls… the sort of vortex I saw, but that stopped a while back.”

“How far back?” she asked, in a tone that told him he was missing something. 

“A few years ago?” Simon answered as he tried to think about how long it had been. “Summer? Maybe fall, three years back?”

“Interesting,” she said after a moment, obviously bursting to tell him something. “Well, what you’re describing, I would call a snarl in the tapestry of the world, and as to what and why that is, maybe if you can figure out why it might have stopped, then I’ll tell you.”

“Figure out?” Simon protested. “I’ve had years to think about it, but I have nothing. That’s why I came to see you.”

“You did,” she agreed, “And I have foreseen all of that, which is why I gave you the critical piece of information you were missing at the beginning of this conversation.”

Simon paused and considered all the topics they’d discussed, discarding them one by one. It hadn’t been a very long conversation, so he didn’t have very many options. Still, it took longer than it should have because his mind refused to accept it. 

“It’s because that’s when the other me died?” he asked, finally.

The oracle said nothing. She merely nodded excitedly as Simon felt a wave of vertigo wash over him. This is going to be a long night. 

Ch. 311 - Snarls in the Loom

Normally, Simon’s conversations with the oracle were fairly short things. His first one with the strange volcanic gases had been only a few minutes, and all the ones he had with her since then had lasted less than an hour. This one lasted for hours, and acolytes were already rising for their chores before they parted ways, but in that time, he learned a great deal. 

Mostly, beyond her complaining about what he was doing to the tapestry of the world, they talked about what a snarl was and why it drew the eyes of those who could see it. Everything was connected. He could see that now, mostly, and though she frowned at the way he used divinatory means to find answers, she agreed that was how it worked. 

“Magic is as complicated as it is powerful,” she insisted, as she always did. She didn’t say it was evil or that he should never use it. He’d seen her use it, but when he commented on that, she waved it off. “I know what the world looks like, and whatever minor spells I might use to help my pupils… well, they cloud my vision for minutes, not days, and I rather think that the powerful magics you prefer to kill people with blur things for you much longer than that.”

He couldn’t argue with her there. He explained his theory that magic needed a vessel and that the vessel didn’t have to be the mage himself. It could just as easily be something that he possessed or used. The Oracle nodded but offered no clear opinion on the subject until he told her about the way he’d used a fruit to reduce his age. 

“You tread dangerously close to real magic there, Simon,” she chastised him, refusing to go into further detail as he revisited the topic. Instead, she kept coming back to the tapestry of fate. 

They looked at the threads that surrounded both of them and though he explained what he could, she always saw deeper than him, which was no surprise. “With a few years of study, you might yet understand things as they really are,” she explained, “I’d invite you to stay, but it's very clear that your fate lies to the south.”

“Does that mean I’m not allowed to stay?” Simon asked. 

“You can, if you like, for a week or two,” she nodded. “Time enough to spend with Zoa, but I do not think there is much learning to be had for you here right now. Perhaps things will change in your next life.”

“Is that a hint?” Simon asked, trying to sneak information out of here. “Can you already see me somewhere else in the world?” He’d tried to get an answer to that question earlier in their conversation, asking how two of him could start in the same location without them seeing each other, but she disowned all of Helades’s magic, even if she wouldn’t say the Goddess’ name directly. 

This time, she only offered, “If I could, it would not be my place to say, for that has little to do with your question.”

By the time Simon returned to Zoa’s dark cell, she was already getting dressed to start her day. She seemed relieved to see him, but Simon was too tired and distracted to do much besides kiss her on the forehead before she was on her way. After that, despite his fatigue, he lay there for at least ten minutes with all the strange contradictions of destiny, sight, and tangled timelines swirling together in his mind. 

The days that followed cleared his head, but mostly, he did his best to mend a half-remembered relationship with a woman he barely knew. It wasn’t entirely comfortable, but just like the morning swims, once he started indulging in it, he found the experience very grounding. 

This time, he was able to see the currents that had elluded him for so long without much effort. Just because he could see what he was doing didn’t make it completely easy, though. Now he could watch the temperatures ebb and flow, but predicting that required him to concentrate on other, darker lines that shifted almost as much as the water. That made the puzzle quite devious, since holding his concentration while trying to swim bordered on the impossible. Still, he made it across mostly unscathed to work with the other acolytes and help them with all the other tasks. 

He couldn’t stay long; he knew that. He did stay long enough to make things right, more or less. Simon spent his third evening there telling Zoa at least part of the truth, even if it was wrapped in a lie. 

“My sight has progressed to the point where I can see when some bad things are about to happen,” he explained to her. “The last time I left, I had to go stop a necromancer and his zombies, and this time… well, there’s a volcano I have to stop.”

“Simon, how can that be?” Zoa asked. He could see that she was trying to believe him, but even that much had overwhelmed her. 

“Well, this is a city for cultivating clarity, right? I—” he started to explain. 

“No, I understand that,” she explained. “Sometimes I get glimpses too. Mostly of you, in faraway places. It's hard to say if they’re real or just wishful thinking, but they make me believe that you’re still safe. I just don’t see how you could stop a volcano from erupting. You’re just a man.”

Simon had been ready for any number of objections, but not that one, and he laughed uproariously at it. In fact, he laughed so hard that he had to stop because Zoa thought he was laughing at her. He apologized for that, and then he showed her the orb he’d crafted for what came next. It was the first person he’d ever gotten to show it to, and even if she wouldn’t understand half of it, he was still proud to do so. 

“This is an… an artifact that I’ve been on a quest for,” he lied. “I don’t know quite how the magic works, but if you throw it into a volcano, it’s supposed to stop it from erupting.”

He wasn’t sure she even heard him as she held the golden ball in her hand. The thing itself wasn’t pure gold, of course, but it was a carved silver sphere that had been plated in the stuff. He’d had to use magic for that since he had no idea how electroplating worked. 

The golden orb was quite heavy, and while there were any number of glyphs that would get the Unspoken on his case in no time, they were utterly inscrutable to Zoa, and unless they put it in a fire, it was harmless to both of them. There were a lot of little design optimizations involved in it, and though he couldn't talk to her about the details, he was quite proud of them. There were inner runes in the core that would freeze the water into ice as soon as the surface started to warm so that the ball wouldn’t melt. He had a high degree of confidence that it would work, but nothing was ever a sure thing. 

It's better, he told himself. I do not want to be walking through the first level over and over again if half of what the Oracle said is true. 

“So if you didn’t have this, then you’d stay?” Zoa asked finally, shaking him from his reverie as she gripped it tighter and tried to heft it.

For a moment, Simon imagined chasing her naked through the dark, empty streets of the temple city before she threw it in the wrong caldera and froze Mount Elian solid. It was a chilling thought because it would ruin this beautiful place, and there’d be no way for him to get it back. He wasn’t even sure if he could fix that if he wanted to, save to go make another orb that did just the opposite, and that would be too hard to balance out. He was bound to screw something up. 

“I would,” he said, with a dry mouth, as she regarded him. He meant it too, but as he saw her with the thing, all he could think of was how he’d let the demon seed loose on Ionar before. He’d gotten so used to thinking of doing things without a safety net that he’d forgotten what it was like. 

She released the thing and hugged him as he spoke. That relaxed him, but only a little, and after that, he made a point of hiding the object better whenever he left the room. 

Still, much as he feared someone would have tried to steal the orb, after a few days, he recognized that was pretty close to impossible. There were no threads attached to it except for his own. He meditated on that as his vision improved over the course of the week, but eventually, when things reached an equilibrium, he decided it was time to go. 

As much as he enjoyed his stay, after a week, he didn’t want to overstay his welcome. Zoe was less than pleased by the development, and watching her cry because he wouldn’t stay with her hurt more than most of his deaths. Besides holding her, he wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it, either. While he had many skills rated as poor or very poor on his character sheet, women and understanding them was probably his weakest skill. 

Simon swore he’d be back, but he honestly didn’t know when he would this time. Using level zero like this made him nervous enough that he expected he’d stick to using the gates for a while. 

If I fuck up through a gate, I get to try again, he reassured himself. 

While that was an interesting thing to worry about, once he changed back into his armor, hugged Zoa goodbye, and left through the main gate, he decided to do more than ponder it. As he descended the mountain, he asked the mirror, “Is there any way to reset level zero like I can the other levels?”

‘Levels in the pit are not reset,’ the mirror clarified, ‘if the conditions for that loop are not completed, they are simply undone and persist in your next attempt.’

“Fine, fine,” Simon grumbled. “So can the zero level… this level, can it be restarted by unraveling or retrying or whatever?”

‘The only way that this level can be untied is by completing the rest of the Pit.’ the mirror answered. 

“I thought you were going to say that,” Simon sighed as he continued his way down the mountain. “It’s going to be a long fight until I’m clear of this place.”

Still, no matter how much he complained about it, there was nothing he could do. A little over a year from now, there would be an eruption, and if the thing he’d worked so hard to create didn’t solve it, then he was going to have to fight it. It would be nearly impossible to survive, of course, even with his new fire-resistant armor, but fortunately, he didn’t care if he survived. As long as he won, it didn’t matter what happened to him.