Death After Death PLUS 288-290

Ch. 288 - Just a Shadow

Simon had started this life with high hopes. He’d planned on a nice, peaceful existence. He was going to relax, learn some magic, and learn more about another culture, but all that was over now. Even if the Magi’s super orb wasn’t going to show everyone who he really was, he wasn’t prepared to watch a kid die every week or so because the teacher didn’t think he was eager enough to kill his classmates. 

He knew from his time as an acolyte that deaths usually occurred more often than that, which meant that they were intentional and part of a weeding-out process. They hoover up any kid with potential off the streets, then they purge all the kids too stupid to learn and kill everyone with a little compassion, he thought to himself sullenly. 

While there was something he was supposed to learn at every step in his journey, it was a filter, too, and after years of this, he could only wonder at what monsters would be considered the cream of the crop. It was a revolting thought, but he kept that disgust far from his expression as he went through the motions serenely. Simon endured the privation and abuse silently over the next few days while his mind focused on what he was going to do next. 

The answer was simple, of course. He was going to escape and do some real damage on the way out. The only question was how exactly. Was he going to try to be subtle and sneak around to get a glimpse at the library or the Dreaming Sphere before making his way back down to Hepollyon, or was he going to tear down the pillars and collapse the whole rotten pyramid on the heads of those who ruled? 

If I want to go out like that, then I really should take my frustrations out on the Pyramid of the God-King. He told himself. It’s a much more potent symbol. 

While that was true, and he liked the image of weakening some critical support at the heart of the thing to make the largest building in the city crumble, that plan had some problems. The biggest of which was that it was almost certainly much better guarded. The last thing Simon wanted to do was to get caught by someone who could make something like the orb he’d seen so recently. That wouldn’t end well for him. 

Still, it wasn’t like he had the freedom to do much of anything in his current role. If only I’d known about this thing while I was in the scriptorium, I would have made my move then, he told himself, but he’d foolishly held out hope that he was moving to a better place and not a worse one. Still, ignorance was no longer an excuse. He’d refrained from magic since his transformation, and it had been good for his soul, but that time was probably coming to an end, and he was going to have to get creative. 

Simon spent his time in the classroom for the next week doing anything but paying attention to the lectures and torments that passed for lessons. He always looked straight ahead at the magi, but in his head, he was a million miles away, identifying weaknesses in the schedule that confined him. 

Ultimately, the real problem with any of his plans, though, was his acolyte. Simon had long since learned the kid’s name was Jebier from the time spent talking to other acolytes in the dining hall and the boys' barracks where they slept each night; he’d also figured out what the real reason for the arrangement was, too. 

At first, Simon had thought that it was a humiliating way to save on books and instructors and that the Magi simply made each student go through this same class twice: once as a clueless newbie and once as the bottom-most member of the real social hierarchy. He’d thought it was to give these kids a taste for ruling over each other, but it was more than that, too. It was an enforced buddy system. 

The shadow had to follow the acolyte, and the acolyte had to keep track of his shadow. It made for a neat closed loop, adding one more layer of fairly obvious control and observation on top of whatever magical monitoring they were under. The apprenticeship is probably the same thing, too, Simon reasoned, whenever he saw a Magi walking through the plaza being trailed by a black-robbed apprentice. Everywhere in the system, everyone is always watching everyone else. 

It felt despotic to Simon, but it was effective because even though there were no real bonds between him and Jebier, the last thing he wanted to do was hurt the kid. Maybe I’ll wait until he graduates to whatever the next stage in the crazy learning process is, and then I’ll make my move, Simon told himself. 

That was the only loose end he hadn’t worked out. He knew how he’d take notes on the sphere if he got the chance and how he’d bring down the pyramid if time allowed. He even knew how he’d get across the plaza and out into the inner city without being seen. 

As long as he didn’t leave behind any clues that would give the Magi the chance to use divining magic to locate him, none of that would be a problem. He just didn’t know how he was going to do those things without getting the acolyte he was supposed to shadow tortured to death for information he didn’t have when Simon was never found. Fortunately, two weeks later, the teacher herself solved that problem when she tried to kill the boy. 

Simon had expected the day to be like any other, and though he dreaded when she brought out the dreaming orb again and started tormenting her students with unreal magic that led to very real pain, he couldn’t actually bring himself to stare into the thing, at least not until she summoned his Acolyte, Jebier to the front of the room. When that happened, and the teen boy moved to the front of the room, Simon made himself watch, but only so that if she tried to kill him, he would stop her.

As he let his vision be drawn into the glowing orb, he watched a familiar scene take place. “We start with force,” the teacher declared, walking them through each spell one at a time. 

It started well enough, and both boys seemed content enough to batter each other with waves of force, force, and whatever else. Even the illusionary shapes were drawn fairly well by both of them when you considered how much pain they were both probably in at that point. Fire and lighting, though, was where Jebier faltered. Simon could see it immediately in the displeasure on the Magi’s face and on how little Jebier’s fire actually burned the other boy. 

“It is not enough to be able to endure pain!” she declared. “One must also be able to receive it.”

As the Magi opened her mouth to hurt them all enough that at least one person was certain to die from her anger, many thoughts flashed through Simon’s head in that moment. His first was that he could strike her down and stop this. That led to thoughts of using a word of force to slice up the witch into bloody chunks before she could speak a word of power, which led to the realization that if he killed her where she stood, the resulting explosion from the damn amulet they all wore would kill both the boys anyway. 

“It all starts with force,” he whispered, testing his voice for the first time in weeks before he whispered “Oonbetit” and sent the woman flying back against the far wall like a toy with a word of force. It was hard enough that it might kill her, but Simon pulled that punch a little to make sure it wasn’t a sure thing. 

While she flew, he paid attention to the way it felt to use magic again after so long. He was out of practice enough that he could taste the sulfur, but something about the whole thing felt unclean to him, and he could see whatever part of his mind or soul that the oracle might call clarity slipping away from him almost as soon as he said the word. 

I can look for stillness in my soul later, Simon assured himself. Right now, I need magic more than enlightenment. 

While the last thing he wanted was for her to be awake and aware of what came next, he’d much rather she lie there bleeding than self-immolate. Fortunately, he’d judged the forces involved carefully enough that that was about what happened. She was ripped off her feet and bounced off the stone twenty feet away from her like a rag doll before she collapsed on the floor. 

No one reacted yet, though, because all the students except for him had been gazing into the orb. It was only when that light failed, and they looked around in confusion, that the first girl’s scream of horror rang out. Soon, there were dozens of cries and gasps of alarm, and both boys backed slowly away from the orb, insisting they’d had nothing to do with it. They all feared punishment, and they should, but this wasn’t enough chaos for what he was planning, so he amped it up a notch with an illusion. 

“Barom,” he whispered, focusing on making it look like the pillar carved in the shape of the God-King had come to life. 

It looked down at the glowering with eyes that began to burn. Simon gave everyone a few seconds to notice that. Then he had words spring into existence over the heads of the students burning with the same fire. ‘You have disappointed me for the last time. Flee for your lives, or I will devour your souls.’

Simon had to admit, it was a frightening image, and as the words hunt there in row upon burning row, he felt pretty pleased with himself. There was no danger or even heat, but no one else knew that. Still, he was prepared to start tossing around his fellow students with words of lesser force if he needed to. Fortunately, it wasn’t. Even before the last words in the sentence appeared, those boys and girls who were the best at reading were running for their lives. 

Simon curled into a ball where he stood, cowering as the room began to clear out. The last thing he wanted anyone to do was to remember one little boy just standing there. Fortunately, Jebier didn’t attempt to grab him and ran for his life, leaving his shadow to his fate. 

That probably should have annoyed Simon. He’d just saved the boy’s life even if he’d never know it, and yet somehow, he didn’t even merit a single backward glance. “Kids today,” Simon sighed as he stood. Then, smiling as he took in the empty room, he started toward the teacher’s lectern. He just needed a bit of metal, and he could get started. 

Ch. 289 - Thinking Bigger

There was a pen on the teacher’s lectern and some notes. While he pocketed the small book containing her notes, along with her wand that had been lying underneath them, he didn’t expect to find anything interesting in them. He spared a minute to look at the wand, noting it had some of the same techniques that he’d already theorized about. This one seemed to channel whatever word the mage spoke or perhaps gestured through one of several runes. There was one for focus, distance, lesser, and greater. Between lesser and greater, there was a rune he didn’t know that contextually seemed to be sort of a lesser greater. 

Does that one just double an effect or triple it instead of increasing a spell by an order of magnitude, he wondered. It would be a nice thing to know, but right now, it didn’t matter. He could study it later and learn more then. 

Instead, he focused on the pen, and with a word of metal, he reshaped the thing into a small hand mirror. Then, as he approached the orb for the first time, he said, “Alright, mirror, you there? I’m going to need you to take some pictures for me to review later when I have more time.”

There was a long delay, and Simon almost asked again before it wrote, ‘I have found you at last and am ready to preserve what you show me.’

Fair, Simon decided with a nod. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a reflective surface in this place. He didn’t waste time trying to explain any of that to the mirror. It wouldn’t care. Instead, he lifted the mirror and started to take in the orb. “Don’t miss a detail”, he commanded.

He knew the pictures from a mirror of this size would be a little blurry, so he moved the mirror slowly so that he wouldn’t miss anything. Even as he did so, though, his eyes hungrily devoured the complicated patterns. There were at least five layers of runes on this thing. No, six, he corrected himself as he realized the thing was hollow and that some of the marks he thought were on the facets were actually carved on the inside of the giant gemstone and not the outside. 

Each of the gold bands he’d been able to see from his seat were elevated from each other with clever standoffs so they didn’t intersect with each other, and though he had no idea how the magic that powered the interwoven runic layers worked precisely, he knew why it was done like this. Each layer was sort of a boundary condition to make the rules for the next one. In many ways, what he was looking at was as complicated as a video game console or a computer, but with magic instead of electronics, and that blew Simon’s mind. 

He’d pondered the idea of making more complicated artifacts than his blades or even his fire-resistant armor. He’d theorized what the crown that his evil twin had might do, but this was orders of magnitude more than he’d ever contemplated. If they do this for an educational toy, what else are the Magi up to? He wondered. 

Simon used a word of lesser force to rotate the thing a hundred and eighty degrees so he could explore the bottom. He didn’t dare touch it because he didn’t understand it, but even that gentle touch of magic was enough to make a scattering of runes light up. Simon knew he dared not linger. He was certain that people would be here to investigate soon. 

Even if they don’t, Magi Karala might wake up at any moment, Simon told himself, willing himself to move from where he was rooted to the spot with curiosity. He recognized most of these runes. If he could comprehend how this worked, then the things he might be able to make…

Simon forced himself to focus. He even started to put away the mirror, but he didn’t. Instead, he realized that there was one more thing he wanted to take pictures of and moved toward the unconscious body of his teacher. She might wake up at any moment. Someone might interrupt them. All of that was true, but he’d never gotten to take a very good look at the amulets these people wore. Even as a vampire, he’d been denied that because of how easily they exploded. 

Now, he had a chance, and he was going to take it. He rushed over to the woman and wasted no time in checking her pulse. She was bleeding from the head, but if she was dead, she’d be a cinder by now. Instead, he picked up the amulet with trembling fingers and examined it. 

The bronze, lotus-shaped thing was more complicated than any protective amulet he’d ever attempted to make, but compared to what he’d just been looking at, this thing was at least comprehensible.

There was a large Eszloum rune in the center that attached it to the wearer’s soul, but the rest— Before Simon could dig too deeply, he heard the sound of someone coming down the hallway that connected the lecture hall to the outside. Without thinking, Simon put away his mirror in his robe as he whispered, “Gervuul Barom.”

Simon had used a word of greater light when he’d faced Freya but never a word of greater illusion, and he was surprised at how different they felt besides using the same words. While it might be overkill in this scenario, he’d rather be safe than sorry. The spell burned his throat after not using a greater word in so long, but Simon endured it and slowly slipped away as it took hold. 

Illusion magic, as he understood it, was defined by complexity, amplitude, and duration. The more powerful it was, and the brighter it burned, the faster it was used up. In this case, the illusion he was creating was neither powerful nor complex, but he had no wish to be seen any time soon, so he wanted his invisibility to last as long as possible. 

He’d need it if he wanted to sneak out of the pyramid, through the courtyard, and into the city, where he might have some chance of evading everything that was going to happen next. As much as he wanted to stay and learn more secrets, he’d reached his limit. He’d always been horrified at the industrial-scale use of blood magic in theory, but to watch children being murdered and molded into monsters in practice was even worse than the images his imagination had already so convincingly conjured.

As he backed away, the surrounding air blurred, but only slightly. His illusion was a simple one, making the light flow like water around him. Only his eyes were immune so that he could still see, which meant that he’d have to close them whenever he wanted to truly disappear. For now, though, he just wanted to reach the pillar near the lectern. He’d hide there until whoever was coming swept the room, and then after that, he’d escape when the heat died down. 

No sooner had he reached his destination that magi poured into the room. Two, five, and finally, eight of them were there. A few cast spells immediately that Simon didn’t understand, and one moved to heal the fallen Magi, who did her best to explain what happened. 

“I-I was about to fail a student who was proving to be too gentle,” she explained, making Simon’s grip tighten in anger. “When suddenly I was struck by a wave of force, and… I’m not sure.”

“Do you think it was the student in question?” one of the new Magi asked. 

“Impossible,” she exclaimed. “He was still in the dream.”

“What’s this about the God-King’s disapproval?” another one asked. Simon had his eyes closed, but he was sure they were all looking at him, or at least the pillar he was hiding behind, so he dared not open his eyes.

Magi Karala had no idea what he was talking about, but as they explained it to her, she grew horrified. “It can’t be the truth. It must have been some mischievous illusion!”

“Acolytes know the words of force and illusion,” the first man agreed. He sounded like he was some kind of authority. “But this would have required more power than a minor word can command.”

Magi Karala slowly got to her feet, and the half dozen of them proceeded to have an animated conversation about everything that they’d experienced and what it might mean. Was this the work of another Magi? Would that be better or worse than a student who was more than they seemed? Might someone have released a demon to cause mischief?

Several times, they got close enough to the truth in their conversation about infiltrators, spies, and intrigue that he was afraid they might guess his existence. “The divinations will tell us the truth,” the first man said finally, with a note of finality. “I will go to—”

He paused, speaking then. They all did. It took Simon a moment to figure out why. Another Magi just appeared there, he thought with the sudden realization that there were seven people standing there now, not six. There's been no flash of light or magical glow. One second, he hadn't been there, and now he was. The newcomer didn’t look any older than the rest, but he was dressed in golden robes rather than the red, blue, or green that everyone else was wearing. 

“Someone has infiltrated our inner sanctum? And profaned our master?” the man asked in an icy tone. “We will find them, and after we have torn every answer from their throat, we shall shred their soul unto oblivion.”

Simon watched, but only because everyone was looking at this newcomer and not at him. What did I get myself into? He wondered. Who is this guy?

There were no answers. No one addressed him. They were all obviously afraid of him, though. 

That silence only lasted a moment, then the man began to chant, while he moved his fingers at the same time, showing, at the very least, that two-layer spellcasting was possible. 

Simon tried to listen, but the individual syllables were too faint. What he could hear, though, was that the spell was much longer than any spell he’d ever cast before. The man wasn’t saying a handful of words. He was saying a sentence or two. How much of that is ritualistic mambo jumbo, and how much of that is complex words of power? He wondered. 

While Simon hoped for the former, he feared it was the latter, and those fears were born out a moment later. A cluster of twinkling lights appeared in front of the man and began to align into the shape of an arrow. An arrow that was pointed right at Simon. 

He ducked behind the pillar just as everyone looked in his direction and tried to decide what it was he should do. Murder was probably the only answer he had. He’d been planning to run for it. He’d thought that he left too little evidence behind for them to track him, but apparently, he’d been wrong. Is it because I’m still so close? Is it because I touched her?

His mind was racing, but he only had seconds to decide what to do, and he felt increasingly painted into a corner. You said you want to bring the pyramid down, he decided after momentary deliberation. Let’s bring it down.  

“Spread out!” the newcomer shouted. “Whoever did this is still in here with us. Leave some part of his body intact so we can—”

Simon was in a young body, with decades of life in front of it. He was almost tempted to try a triple major word but decided against it at the last moment. He didn’t have a hundred years of life to give, and he didn’t want this to fizzle. Instead, he went smaller and said, “Gervuul Gervuul Vosden.”

Simon considered force instead of the word of maximum earth as he’d come to think of it, but he wasn’t sure he could shatter a ten-foot-wide pillar of basalt even with that much power. Instead of trying, he was converting a huge swath of it into something that could never hope to hold the weights that were much too massive for anything but the hardest stone: quartz. 

He knew from his time as a painter that the veins of the two ran together. One often contained inclusions of the other, which told him they were pretty similar. Truthfully, he probably didn’t even need to spend ten years of his life to do the damage he needed, but there was no point in skimping. 

Even before the pillar transformed, he felt the power surging painfully out of him. It rippled out into the giant carving, transforming the black stone to milky, translucent quartz crystals as some of the Magi began to fling fire and lightning at him. 

Even as those elemental forces splashed against Simon’s cover, though, the thing was already cracking. It wasn’t until someone hit it with an ill-advised bolt of force in an effort to reach whoever it was that was behind all this that the thing shattered, making the room that they were in rumble precipitously. 

Simon knew that he should run, but his massive word of power had sapped him of energy, and all he could do was watch as the magi that opposed him were shredded in an avalanche of razor shards. The gold-masked magi, alone, survived with a hastily erected shield, which made Simon smirk. He doubted very much that would be enough to save him when the roof started to collapse. 

Still, just to be sure, Simon managed to croak out one final spell before the first stones of the ceiling fell. “Dnarth Uuvellum,” he rasped, making it hurt all the more for how hard it was to pronounce after he’d just torn up his throat so badly. 

He didn’t care if it hurt, though. He just cared that whoever this prick was didn’t make it, and word of distant nullification would do exactly that. One second, he was casting another spell safely from behind his shield, and the next, the shimmering shapes around his hands were fading. 

Simon’s last thought as the giant stone blocks of the ceiling caved in on all of them was of the brown-robed children at the pinnacle of the pyramid. We hoped they’d been evacuated before everything came tumbling down. The idea that he might crush everyone around him and everyone beneath him to death was one thing. 

People in the depths of this place had almost certainly done unconscionable things and deserved whatever they got, but the new kids? They still had hope. 

Ch. 290 - Hard Reboot

When Simon woke up once more in his cabin, he was more frustrated than afraid. He’d worked so hard. He’d wasted weeks and months and the chance to return to Hepollyon to see Zoa again, and all for nothing. 

“Not nothing,” he sighed, “You finished a level, got a couple new words of power, and a whole lot of information about the Magi. You even toppled one of their pyramids. That’s definitely going to set them back a ways, right?”

Or would it? He wondered. While all of that was true, he hadn’t actually gone through any portals, and all of the solutions he’d were on future levels. So, were the changes permanent? He wasn’t sure. 

Simon took a deep, calming breath, but when he let it out, none of it made him feel any better. He’d sacrificed a lot for that run. He’d pushed himself in ways he never had before, and mostly he’d just gotten to watch the Magi brainwash kids. He might have learned a lot about someone that he was more and more considering to be his main enemy in the region. 

Despite that, though, he hadn’t gotten what he’d wanted out of it. If anything, he’d been teased by all the things he’d almost learned.  He’d discovered a way to learn speechless casting without actually learning how to do much of it. He’d seen and heard several words used that he never got the chance to learn yet, as well. This included the ability to teleport and a way to make your enemies fall asleep!

While he would literally kill for either of those powers, if he got the power to put people to sleep, then he’d have to kill a lot fewer people going forward, and there was no way that wouldn’t be good for rebuilding a positive experience score.

“Yeah, yeah, and if I’d learned how to teleport, then I could have gotten out of that room and continued the run,” he berated himself. “If you didn’t actually learn it, then it doesn’t count.” 

He didn’t allow himself to sulk for long, though. Sulking was worse than pointless; it was counterproductive, and he would have chastised any of his young students for it if he’d still been an instructor. 

Truthfully, if he didn’t have so many other things to do, he’d consider being an instructor again just to see how much better he could do at it now that he’d been both a student and a teacher. It was definitely something he wanted to try, but not nearly as important as sifting through the images he’d taken in his final moments inside the pyramid of lesser miracles or his need to complete more levels. 

So, instead of doing that or even grabbing a bite to eat, he sat up and started dictating his personal to-do list for the next time he made it that far north to his trusty mirror. Once that was done, he told it all of the ghastly observations he’d made in what passed for the Magi’s magic school in case he ever forgot, and then he commanded it, “Show me the pictures you took of the Dreaming Orb and the Magi’s amulet.”

When the mirror started answering with text, he knew he’d confused it and said, “No, don’t ask what those are. Just show me the pictures you took in the final moments of my last life!”

This time, they started coming through, one after the other, in a fairly rapid-fire fashion while he tried not to notice how awful he looked on the reflective surface. Simon could have told it to pause at any moment if it wanted to study any of them in detail, but he didn’t right now. He just wanted to make sure they were there. So, as soon as he verified that, he labeled them so his idiot mirror would know what he was looking for next time, and then said, “Alright, now tell me which levels are accessible.”

While it started to write up the list of accessible levels, he decided that if he ever tried to infiltrate that group again, it would be as an adult. He’d simply shadow one of the Magi, kill them, and then take their place. If I did it right, and their servants didn’t even notice the swap, I could probably get pretty deep access to those libraries, he pondered as he watched row after row of future destinations appear in the mirror. 

It would be pretty easy. Now that he had a good idea of the layout of the place and he knew of their propensity for wearing masks, he could just walk into a library, announce himself, and start reading. Simon liked the plan, but not enough to go right back. The place still had a bad taste in his mouth, so instead, he reviewed the listed levels he could explore next. 

‘Level 9 - Ruins on a mountaintop and a wyvern.

Level 10 - A volcano in Ionar.

Level 11 - A dark forest at night with an owl bear.

Level 12 - A bridge troll and an abandoned village.

Level 16 - A village in the midst of an orc raid.

Level 19 - Lizard men in a swamp.

Level 20 - A Basilisk amongst the ruins.

Level 21 - A haunted cemetery.

Level 22 - A costume party.

Level 27 - Centaur raiders near Crowvar.

Level 34 - ?????”

Truthfully, Simon had expected more things to change after everything he’d done. “Well, maybe because I was so far out of my little sandbox, nothing I did affected too much, he told himself. Or maybe none of it stuck. It should have, though, right? I locked in level six and leveled a giant structure in the same run… 

No, that can’t be right, he decided. The lizard men are new. That level was definitely solved before. Didn’t I have to deal with the werewolf level again, though? Where did that go?

Simon wasn’t sure, but right now, he didn’t really care. He cared about the way some of those reopened levels made him feel. He could very easily investigate level nine and then solve it. In fact, that was absolutely the next move he was planning to make. After that, though, he was far less certain. 

By this point, Simon knew he should be facing the levels in the order he found them so that he wouldn’t have to unsolve future levels, but somehow, knowing that was true wasn’t enough to make him want to face Ionar again, not yet. It wasn’t the only pain point, of course. 

Along with the coastal city, Crowvar and Darndelle held mixed memories for him, and while he wanted to see what the problem was in the graveyard now that the dark heart was out of the picture, he was saddened that the orphanage that the city had once built in his name had never existed.  

“I could deal with the owl bear,” Simon told himself. “Then, once it's dead, I could follow those kids and make sure that woman never becomes a monster who thinks it's a good idea to slaughter everyone.”

That was a fine idea, but it didn’t quite feel right. Simon got to his feet and began to pace, feeling conflicted. 

“I could find somewhere to spend a couple of years digging through the pictures I took. I don’t have any money, but I’m sure I could get some in Ionar from the palace before I move on,” he said, “Or I could dig deeper into the Pit, which is what I should have been doing last life, instead of wasting my time in that fucking hellhole.”

Simon was a little surprised by that outburst of rancor, but that was probably growing annoyance that he was back in his fat ass body as much as anything, so to lift his spirits, he grabbed his apple, then went outside and sat in the shade of a large tree to eat it. 

“To grind or not to grind, that’s the question,” he said bitterly, biting into the ripe red fruit. 

He spent a good twenty minutes there, just enjoying the warm breeze and the feeling of freedom that had been denied him for nearly half a year. When he got up, he thought about planting the core and trying to work a similar spell to the one that had made him young, but that seemed too dramatic for a little weight loss. 

“What are you worried about, man?” he asked himself as he bent to plant the thing. “You fuck up your body, you can get a new one. It wouldn’t even take ten minutes.”

That was true. Transforming his body into someone else who wasn’t even recognizable as himself had taken away a lot of fear about this. So, instead of going right back into the house, he took a moment to visualize himself at his peak performance, and then whispered, “Celdura Hyakk,” and he felt his entire body tingle as things began to reorganize and move around.

First and foremost, his gut shrank. He could see that without a mirror. As he held up his arms, he saw ever so slightly more definition, too, more than that he’d have to go inside to see. As he walked, there were a few muscle cramps and one brief, sharp pain in his gut that made him worry that he’d done something wrong, but all of those quickly passed, and when he returned inside, he looked like a new man. 

While Simon wasn’t the strongest or the most handsome he’d ever been, he was a lot closer to average than the overweight guy he started out every run as, and that was nice. One more word of flesh shaping might even get him there, but a word of major flesh shaping was probably overkill. That could wait for a day or two; he wanted to let everything shake out before he pressed his luck. 

“Well, that’s progress, at least,” he said to himself as he sat back down on his bed. He still didn’t know what he should do, but he felt better about who he was, and when he was reading from the mirror, it was impossible not to see himself sitting there in the background. 

“Let’s pull up my character sheet next, and after that, we can figure out what in the hell to do,” Simon said, feeling a little better about everything. He might not have gotten everything he’d wanted, but he’d made progress, and none of the Magi had trapped his soul in a bottle for half an eternity; in the Pit, that was pretty much all you could ask for. 

‘Name: Simon Jackoby

Level: 33

Deaths: 45

Experience Points: -82,461

Skills: Academics [Average], Agriculture [Poor], Archery [Below Average], Armor (light) [Below Average], Armor (heavy) [Poor], Armor (medium) [Poor], Art [Above Average], Athletics [Average], Baking [Poor], Cooking [Poor], Craft [Above Average], Deception [Above Average], Escape [Poor], Fishing [Below Average], Healing [Average], History [Above Average], investigate [Excellent], Maces [Average], Navigation [Above Average], Research [Excellent], Ride [Below Average], Search [Above Average], Sneak [Above Average], Spears [Below Average], Spell Casting [Excellent], Steal [Below Average], Swimming [Below Average], and Swords [Average] Transformation [Average] Warfare [Average].

Words of Power: Aufvarum (disperse, minor), Barom (illusion, light), Celdura (plan, shape), Delzam (cure, order), Dnarth (command, connection, distant, hidden), Eszloum (soul), Farzehl (alter, manipulate, twist), Gelthic (ice, death, weakness), Gervuul (greater, power), Hyakk (flesh, healing), Karesh (location, protection, understanding), Meiren (creation, fire, life), Oonbetit (focused, force, motion), Uuvellum (anti-, null, boundary), Vosden (earth, growth, metal, strength), Vrazig (lightning, ruin, quickening, wind), Weylera (because, on condition of), Zyvon (transfer, plants, water)’