Death After Death PLUS 229-231

Ch. 229 - Further Afield

Simon’s slumber was mostly darkness and dread, as it always was, but the few dreams that flitted through it were blood-drenched nightmares. The decent parts of his soul warred with the dark, primal parts, and not even the fact that the men he’d slaughtered so violently were bad people was enough to make him feel much better when he finally awoke. 

Drinking the blood of the living won’t take me any place I want to go, he told himself as he awoke. 

He’d only been sitting there for a few minutes after sunset when Ara arrived, appearing almost as his opposite. She was beautiful and well put together, with fine clothes and even a touch of makeup, while he wore blood-stained rags. His body was no longer starving. No, he was merely emaciated, but his mangled hands looked like they belonged to a monster. They’d never healed right from the terrible wounds that Freya had inflicted on him, and they’d grown even worse after the change. His thick yellow nails made him look like a beast all the time even if he only felt like one whenever he scented blood. 

“How did last night go?” she asked. “I worried you wouldn’t return.”

“Their scouts are slaughtered,” Simon answered with a shrug. “I left them in pieces scattered across the woods. When they send out more to find what it is the carrion birds are circling, they’ll know that they need to be more careful going forward.”

That pleased her, and she discussed how her efforts to rally men to the defense of the valley were going. Simon nodded along, even though he wasn’t particularly interested. He was too busy trying to decide what he needed to do next and if there was a way that he could do it without killing any more people when she asked him that very question. 

“What will you do now?” she asked, breaking his reverie in a way that made him worry she’d read his mind for a moment. 

“I’ll keep buying you time,” he answered simply. “I’m just not sure how yet.”

They talked a while longer, but the rest of the conversation went nowhere. Eventually, the two of them parted ways as they both had things to see to. Simon cautioned her that he might find somewhere closer to the pass to spend the night rather than waste an hour traveling to and from there each night. Ara cautioned him, “Be careful. I know you want to die, but we are intensely vulnerable while the sun is in the sky.”

Simon agreed with that, but that caution didn’t change his mind at all. Instead, it only solidified his plans, and after collected a new sword and shield, he soared through the sky on nearly two dozen wings as he considered all of these things. Much like his clothing, they vanished with him when he shifted forms, but he knew they would be there again when he was once more whole. He couldn’t explain how it worked, but this wasn’t the life to try to understand such strange magical dynamics, and he told himself he would try to figure it out in his next one. 

Last night had been clear and bright with a half-full moon, but tonight, the sky was overcast. It promised rain, but neither that nor the darkness caused him any problems. In fact, he thought he might be able to see the valley even better with less light in the sky. It was hard to say for sure. 

He was going to try to kill two birds with one stone. He was going to find a place to sleep in those high mountain crags, and he was going to feast on the goblins within it so that he could find a way to deter the looming army without devouring them quite so gluttonously as he had up to this point. 

Before he did any of that, though, he simply soared high above the area. Judging by the number of campfires, there were hundreds of men there at the saddle of the pass and thousands more on the downslope. There were far too many for the plan he’d proposed to ever work, he realized despairingly. 

That means it's all on me, Simon thought with a mental sigh. 

That wasn’t a tonight problem, though. Any violence he did, would be a carefully targeted warning. He promised himself he wouldn’t feed on them in any case, which meant he definitely needed to find something to devour first. 

It took only a little searching to find the goblin lair. It was a small one, but as soon as he reformed into a man, his heightened sense of smell was practically overwhelmed by the stench of the place. It would do, but he would not enjoy it, which seemed an appropriate sort of penance for the terrible things he’d done last night. 

Simon stood there silently for a long moment, growing used to it before he even sought out his first goblin. They saw nearly as well as he did in the dark, but even so, when he glimpsed the ugly little bastard with a spear, there was no contest. Simon simply picked it up, slammed it against a nearby bolder, and then drained it while it was stunned. 

It didn’t even attempt to sound an alarm, and other than the soft fleshy sound that Simon made as he swung it like a club, it silently passed after only a few moments of draining. That was the only good news about the whole thing. The rest of his experience was awful. Unlike the sweet warmth of human blood, the thing tasted acid and vinegary. It was like consuming a human who was well past their best buy date. It was substance, though, and even though the monster inside of him longed for human flesh, it consumed the dark black blood greedily.

That was only the first kill of the night. After that, he descended into the lair, and Simon spent half the evening murdering and devouring goblins until there was nothing left. This time, he didn’t feel the least bit bad about his rampage, and when he emerged once more soaked in black blood, he felt somewhat better. He’d murdered and fed, but not on people, and for now, that was a small victory. 

Sometime in the last couple of hours, while he’d been slaughtering green skins by the dozens, it had started to rain. That didn’t bother him, either. Not only did it suppress the stink he’d thought he’d never escape, but it started to rinse him clean. He just stood there for several long minutes in the cold, appreciating it as he watched the filth and the gore drip off his hands one drop at a time. 

He didn’t feel good yet, but he felt better. Somehow, despite all the violence, he felt at peace then. He might have been content to stay that way had he been able to ignore the campfires burning in the pass below like a swarm of fireflies. 

“How do I convince so many men that they have no chance?” he asked himself as he started walking down the slope to the men below. 

The answers were fairly obvious and not entirely different than they would be if he were human. The easiest one would be to march on them with a superior enough force that they retreated. That one, at least for now, was impossible, which meant he would have to go for the second-best alternative, which was to strike the head of the snake. 

That option was good but unpredictable. If their leader was a popular man, it might drive his army forward to avenge him by daylight, which Simon would have no chance to counter. 

“That means I need to make them afraid first,” he decided. He’d already started that in motion by massacring their scouts, but one setback, no matter how bloody, would not be enough.

Simon looked around. He didn’t want them to think that a vampire was harrying them, even up here. If they did, they might no longer have any reason to cower. That was good; it gave him one more reason not to do any unnecessary biting, even if it limited his other options. 

When Simon reached their first scout three hundred yards from the line of campfires that held back the night, he snapped the man's neck. Then, he ripped him to pieces and left him where he lay. With any luck, they’d think it was goblins or something worse. 

Once that was done, he was about to turn away to find another scout to end in the same way until a boulder caught his eye. It was large, nearly round, and precariously balanced. More importantly, there was still plenty of slope between him and the leading edge of the camp, which meant that if he could move it, there was every likelihood that it would rampage right through several rows of tents and cause all kinds of chaos. 

Which is exactly the sort of thing that might make a soldier afraid, he decided. Though soldiers weren’t quite as superstitious as sailors, they weren’t so good with enemies they couldn’t meet on the battlefield. It was one thing to know that a hoard of centaurs might kill you, but at least you could die on your feet. It was quite another to face a volcano or an earthquake. 

Simon looked around the slope and imagined all the chain reactions he could cause with a major word of earth. Sadly, for the moment, that was entirely out of his reach, but acts of pure brute strength were not. 

When he approached the boulder and pressed against it experimentally, it didn’t move. He thought about simply pushing against it with his shoulder as hard as he could, but after seeing a nearby log, decided there was a better way. 

“You can be insanely strong, but still not as strong as a lever,” he chastised himself as he picked up the several hundred-pound piece of wood and, with great effort, thrust it partway under the rock. 

The second time he tried, it shifted almost immediately, and with only a little strain, he forced the thing to roll forward once. It hung there for a second like it had found a new resting point, and then, with agonizing slowness, it turned over again. That time, it didn’t slow down at all. Instead, with every turn, it started to move faster and faster. Soon, more medium-sized stones followed in its wake, spreading out slightly to expand the tiny avalanche. 

Simon smiled. This was going to be far more devastating than he had ever planned. It wasn't a tactic that he was going to be able to repeat easily, but it would be worth looking around on the slopes to see if he could find any other good setups.

There were a few outcries even before the stones hit the pickets or the tents, but they were of surprise and alarm. They wouldn’t be enough to save many people. 

Simon had managed to move five tons of stone a few inches, but when it hit the outer defenses of the Murani camp, it was a hundred-ton wave of rock that killed and crushed with equal impunity. For a few frantic seconds, there were the sounds of screams as people died and the snapping of wood as tents, large and small, were flattened. 

When the rocks were still, though, there was only the sound of the wounded moaning in pain and the bewilderment of those who’d been spared. Simon smelled dust on the rain during the avalanche, but now that it was done, he found a new aroma on the breeze: blood. 

He could smell the carnage from here, and it made his mouth water. It was a hundred times sweeter than any goblin. That was when he turned around and started back up the slope. He could resist temptation, but only to a certain point, and for this evening, he’d reached it. Dozens of dying men smelled far too much like a banquet to him than he was comfortable with. 

He retreated to the darkness of his goblin den with hours left in the night, satisfied with that. He dreaded the stench, but tomorrow, he could try to find a better place. Surely, there was a cave in one of these mountains that only smelled like water and dust. He would find it, and maybe once this army was done, he would meditate there until the beast within him was once more entirely under his control. 

Ch. 230 - Hunting Grounds

Away from the castle for that first day, Simon slept worse than ever. None of his days as a deathless abomination had been pleasant, but between the smell and the constant feeling that he’d missed some of the goblins and they’d come back to devour him, he was in a sort of waking nightmare the whole time while the sun kept him down by the throat in a terrible sleep paralysis. 

Once, when he was convinced he heard the little green bastards coming for him, he managed to turn his head to look, which was the most he’d ever managed to move in a state of torpor, but there was no one there. It was just his imagination tormenting him. 

For so long, it had been a valuable resource. He used it for art and magic, but now, it was an enemy, and it filled those hours with ever more creative monstrosities. 

In the morning, Simon decided that he would need to find another place to sleep before he did anything else unless the situation was truly dire. Fortunately, when he burst apart into a flock of ebon crows and surveyed the scene, he found that it had improved, if only marginally. 

The entire camp had pulled back a hundred yards, choosing the cliffs that held back the rocky slopes as a better point to hold than the boulder dotted scree slopes further on. That was true, of course, so he couldn’t say if it pointed to a wise commander or a nervous one. Either way, it made Simon’s job of inflicting pain on them ever so slightly harder, but a retreat was a retreat, and he would take it. 

It wasn’t hard to see why. Even after they’d almost certainly attempted to collect their wounded and bury their dead, he could still spot crushed limbs and shredded canvas amongst the rubble of the landslide he had caused. 

That boulder did some real damage, he thought approvingly, before he traced the scar it left on the slope back to its origin and noticed that they’d never found the sentry he’d torn to pieces. That annoyed him. Killing was one thing, but killing needlessly still rubbed him the wrong way. 

As he passed over the main body of the camp, Simon felt his hunger gnaw at him. He couldn’t smell their blood or hear it, but his hunger still knew it was there. Eventually, it got strong enough that Simon was forced to wheel away from the group and seek out his breakfast. 

He found a second goblin lair easily enough, as well as a third, eventually, but his stomach revolted against those choices. He found a troll lair, or perhaps an ogre lair as well, further down the mountain, closer to the river, but eventually, he decided to try devouring a bear instead. 

Simon hadn’t tried to consume animal blood yet, but presumably, if Freya had tried to feed him rats after she’d turned him, then such things could sustain him to at least some degree. 

Fighting a grizzly bear, as it turned out, was harder than Simon would have thought. It wasn’t that the thing was ferociously strong, though that did hurt. The one time the thing had landed a solid blow, it not only knocked him back twenty feet, but it also shredded his chest and stomach, sending black blood and shriveled viscera in all directions before he healed. The real problem was the hide. It was so thick that even when Simon got the chance to bite it, he could barely penetrate it to the arteries beneath. 

When he finally won, it was only by jamming his knife into the thing’s spinal column, a few vertebrae below the spine, paralyzing it enough that he could finally latch onto one of the beast's femoral arteries and drink deeply. In the end, it was largely a wasted effort. The blood would sustain him, of course, but it was like muddy ditch water compared to the fine wine of a human victim. Simon would not be dissuaded by that, though he vowed to give goblins, or some other monster, another try on the following day; the further down the food chain his victims drifted, the less appetizing they became. 

After that, he spent the rest of the evening prowling the woods on the far side of the pass from his current sleeping place as he looked for a new one. He didn’t find anything he liked better than his current filthy warren, unfortunately. He did find a few sentries on patrol, though. These he murdered and impaled on snapped-off tree branches several feet above the ground so that future patrols wouldn’t miss them. 

Losing a man or two wouldn’t do anything to a host of about four thousand, which was his best guess about the size of this army. It wasn’t about whittling them down, though. It was about making them afraid. Every soldier that deserted was one less man he would have to kill, and if he could make the entire army do so, even better. 

That was what Simon did for the next few nights. Other than a brief visit with Ara to inform her of what he was doing now and then, as well as a check on the progress that her tiny army was making in their drilling, he spent the entire time terrorizing the Murani army. He had to. 

It was the only chance her 300 farmers had. They were outnumbered by their better-trained, better-armored opponents ten to one, and no amount of fervor or desperation would affect those odds. 

So, each night, he lurked in a different place along the lines of the enemy as they coiled into an ever tighter ball. He cut tether lines and spooked horses, sending them galloping through the camp, set fires in supply depots, and murdered. The last one was ever-present, no matter what he did. He left bodies in his wake at every turn, no matter what the goal of the night was. 

He could hear soldiers whispering about it around the campfires. They attributed all of his misdeeds either to the Widow or to the cursed man wolves that were said to haunt this region. Others disagreed, arguing that “The cursed lady can’t leave her valley, and those wolf monsters only emerge by the light of the full moon!”

Simon listened to them discuss it sometimes, gathering intel and learning more about what the men who made up the army thought before he slaughtered the groups. Unfortunately for them, he rarely left even a single survivor, and the mixed accounts that followed in his wake didn’t even get a good enough look to decide if he was man or beast.

He understood that, too. Even as he continued to gain weight and mass as the days passed, the longer he went without human blood, the less human he became. His skin took on a dark and mottled hue that wasn't quite green, and he grew ever hairier. In time, his claws grew thick enough that using weapons became challenging with certain grips, but that didn't really bother Simon. Mostly, he murdered things with his bare hands now.

Instead of devouring the soldiers, he left them in pieces as he slowly but surely cleansed the mountains of green skins. He never did find a better place to sleep, but somehow, he always found more goblins to devour. They were a pestilence, but one that he was almost grateful for in this life. 

He could see the changes that his foul diet was causing in his body, but he could see it even more clearly in Ara’s eyes. She had an excellent poker face, but each time he visited, she could see her struggle to restrain her surprise and revulsion. 

It didn’t bother Simon nearly as much as it should. That was almost certainly because he knew it was temporary. Better to look like a monster for a little while than be a monster forever, he told himself. As it was, he was getting far too comfortable with ripping people to pieces. Even that, monstrous as it was, was still better than developing a crippling addiction to human blood. 

Still, despite all of these problems, he could see the army growing ever more defensive. He’d dispatched two more small scouting parties that hadn’t quite made it back to their camp before sunset, making it very clear the valley was off-limits. 

They adapted in time, giving him a growing respect for whoever was in charge of the thing. They sent out raiding parties, but only as far as they could go and return in a single day, set traps for him by baiting ambushes with only one obvious soldier on patrol, while archers and mages lay in wait just out of sight, and reinforced their sentries, making sure that men were never alone again after that first week. 

Simon’s response was to slaughter the larger sentry patrols, skip the ambushes, and murder any mages that were dumb enough to leave camp on sheer principle. He was not a hungry beast, well, not just a hungry beast; he was the veteran of a dozen conflicts, and with his obscenely powerful sense of smell, it was impossible to hide from him, even with illusion magics. 

Still, despite all of his efforts, the Murani eventually got reinforcements, which counteracted Simon’s efforts to some degree. That was when he decided it was time to end this. He’d waited long enough to damage morale. If he delayed any further, they were going to move in force. He could feel it. 

It was more than just gossip around the campfire. It was the way the layout of the camp changed, and the drilling fields increased in size. They were getting ready. 

So, one night, before that happened, Simon warned Ara, and told her to prepare her men. Then while he lurked near the edge of the camp, he did something he’d been trying hard to avoid until now. He willed himself to transform into a fine gray mist, just as he’d seen Freya do several times before. He’d grown somewhat used to taking himself apart as he became an ever larger flock of crows, but this was something different entirely. 

As a bird, he still felt alive, if a bit scattered. As a mist, though, he felt like he was dying. He was reducing himself to such a degree that he felt as though he were on the verge of death. Still, it needed to be done, and he pushed through it. 

Then, when he had dispersed into almost nothing, he snaked through the shadows of the outer pickets and between patrols as he made for the center of camp. There was more light as he went, but paradoxically fewer guards. The fact that Simon never attacked deep into the camp worked to his benefit here. 

Everyone was looking for him at the edges, near treelines and suspicious boulders; no one suspected that the ravening beast that had been tormenting them would move into the heart of their camp undetected. That would be their final mistake.

Ch. 231 - The Head of the Snake

The mist was silent, but it was not invisible. More than one man must have spotted him, but in the damp mountain air, no one seemed to care. Simon ignored them, too. He did his best to avoid the brightest spots, but if a soldier blundered through him, there was little he could do but hope the man kept going. 

Eventually, he found the large pavilion in the center of the camp. That was his first clue that something was wrong. He had not met, or even seen, the man that the soldiers whispered about around the fires at night, but he had a good idea who he was, simply by virtue of his actions. General Jubar made good tactical decisions. He was decisive. He was not the sort of person to sleep in his own tiny cloth palace. Not unless Simon had sorely misjudged him. 

Still, the thing had guards around it, so he decided to investigate and poured through the fabric at the back of the tent just enough to peer inside the darkness. It was there he found as lavish a home as he’d ever seen outside of Ionar’s palace. There was a large bed atop rugs, and tapestries hung on the walls. There was even someone in the bed, but that wasn’t what caught Simon’s eye. 

What he noticed was the pattern on the rugs themselves. They were runes, and more than that, they were reasonably powerful. The large one was a rune of binding, but the smaller ones that were scattered around were more gruesome. It was difficult to comprehend them fully while he was limited by his misty form, but he was fairly certain that they would slice him into thick chunks like an industrial-sized blender. 

He retreated immediately. He had no idea if his misty form could trigger such things, but he had no wish to find out. There was always the possibility that the person in that bed was an important mage or warlock, and that was the way that they slept, but Simon wasn’t willing to risk it. Even if it was, he wasn’t looking to hunt mages tonight. He was looking for the head of the snake. 

So, instead of striking at the target of opportunity, he floated away, gaining elevation and becoming more diffuse as he became the wisp of a cloud. The position made him nervous because he was sure that many people could see him now if they cared to look, but he needed a better view to figure out which tent the general was really in. He would be in the tent of a common man, but not a small one, since he doubtlessly had papers and other possessions. He was also sure to have at least one guard, which would narrow the search quite a bit. 

Simon’s plan for tonight was a simple one. He would kill the leader, then rampage through the camp, killing as many as he could. That chaos was the signal, and when they saw it, Ara’s men were supposed to attack at the front and send the whole army sprawling heedlessly away. It was a fine plan, but it relied almost entirely on Simon, and he would only get one chance to get it right. 

Still, despite that, it took only a few minutes to find his next likely target. It did not contain what he expected to find either, though. Instead, it contained either a few young members of royalty or mages. It was hard to say for sure, as they slept in their beds. Still, Simon added them to his secondary target list as he drifted on. 

In the third tent, he finally found the man he suspected to be General Jubar. The man had gray in his mustache and was snoring quite soundly. For a moment, he decided that it was possible that the man was an illusion, but he would have no way to sniff through that until he reclaimed his body. 

Still, everything else fit. The general had two guards standing by the front flap of his tent, a table full of letters and maps, and an armor stand topped by a helmet bearing a general's crest. That was what sealed it for Simon as he coalesced from the thin vapor behind the man’s tent. Only a single layer of canvas hid Simon’s hulking form from the general, but Simon delayed for a moment to see if this was another trap. 

He didn’t smell or hear anything out of the ordinary, though it was hard to say for certain since he was bombarded by the smells of hundreds of men where he stood now. Still, that would change in a moment when he washed them all away with blood. 

When Simon finally struck, he didn’t rip apart the canvas. That was just part of his motion as he thrust his hand through the tent and yanked the sleeping man from his bed in a single violent motion. As soon as he had a good hold on the general’s rib cage, he used his other hand to rip his head clean off. He barely had time to scream. Simon waited for his guards to come running around the other side with spears in hand. He knocked both of them down with the headless torso and then tossed the head into one of their laps, making the man scream.

He bellowed an inhuman challenge that was probably loud enough to wake half of the camp. It made both of them flee in panic, but Simon didn't chase them. They were the only survivors that Simon planned to leave tonight. He wanted the word of the general's death to spread. 

Rather than pursue them, he began to blunder through tents, killing anyone who crossed his path as he fought his way to where he’d seen the sleeping young men earlier. They proved to be mages, and one managed to set Simon alight with a word of fire before he crushed the young man’s skull. The other man wasn’t so bold, and he just pissed himself while he waited for death. 

By the time Simon was done with that, most of his burns had already healed, and horns of alarm were being blown throughout the camp. Simon smiled at that. The more people panicked, the less anyone knew where to go. 

His rampage became more aimless after that. He clawed and ripped and tore. He was stabbed and shot many times, but that did little to dissuade him. Even a massed formation of crossbows was a nuisance more than a deterrent, which was funny to him because a few stakes on those weapons and they could put him out of his misery fairly quickly.

He wouldn’t even mind. It was always better to die by someone else's hand in moments like this. 

I’m probably not what people think of when they use the word vampire, he thought to himself, as he slaughtered almost at random. 

He continued to do so until the number of defenders that had joined together in any one spot grew too great, and then he would dissolve into a storm of crows and flee to another part of the camp to repeat the process. 

By the third time he did that, there weren’t very many people willing to fight him anymore. There was too much chaos. They had no way of knowing there was only a single monster in many places. As far as the shouted reports went, there were monsters attacking from all sides, and when the shouts that “An army in league with the beasts is attacking from the valley!” began to ring out, it was all but over. 

Anyone who could get a horse by then was on one and riding away, but that didn’t stop Simon from going to the tether lines that held the remaining mounts and freeing them to scatter in all directions. The only thing that he wished he could do to add to the chaos was to add some pyrotechnics to the mix, but magic took too much out of him to bother when he was like this. 

I have my own gifts, and for better or worse, they are not words of power, he thought, resigned to who he was for now. 

The fighting was done, and the survivors had fled it was still well before dawn. Simon estimated that hundreds of men lay dead, but thousands of them had fled, which was probably the best outcome. If they played their cards right, the defenders might even be able to hold the pass from this point on, which was all he’d ever signed up for. 

Simon dissolved into two dozen crows and flew back to Castle Gravenstone to let Ara know that they’d won. She looked at him pensively as he spoke, and when he was finally done, she asked, “Then your task is done. What will you do now?”

“Greet the sunrise?” he mused, even though he wasn’t sure he was ready to die just yet. 

She looked at him in shock for a moment before answering, “Well, you’re a braver man than I’ll ever be, Simon.”

“I’m not sure,” he countered. “I want to die, but there are a few things left I need to do. All I know is that I’m never going back to that wall. Have you heard from Freya?”

Simon kicked himself then for not asking that question first. If she were to suddenly appear, then all of this would be for nothing. 

“That’s not how it works,” Ara answered. “Can’t you feel your connection to her? She’s your progenitor. There’s a link there that can never be broken. Through it, you can feel her, and she can feel you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I never want to feel connected to her again,” Simon spat. Still, even as he discounted it, he groped around mentally for it but found nothing. He probably hated her too much for too long to ever feel connected to her now. 

Ara concentrated for a moment, then turned and pointed north. “She’s there, somewhere, far, far away from us. Hundreds of miles, at least. She’s alive, but she’s not very happy. I can tell you little beyond that.”

“Well, it sounds like she’s been captured by the enemy,” Simon answered with a shrug. "Hundreds of miles puts her past the mountains and the desert. That’s deep Maurai territory." 

“Do you think she needs someone to save her?” Ara asked uncertainly. 

“I think she needs someone to finish her off,” he answered. “Fortunately, no matter what I do next, my business takes me west, not north.”

“If you’re not going to kill yourself, then we could use you here, Simon,” Ara said. “You’ve been a great help and—”

“Yeah, you could,” he agreed, “But I think I’ve done all the killing I’m going to do for a long, long time.”

“How will you live then?” she asked as he turned and started walking away. 

“Miserably,” he answered, “But it’s not like this is the first time I’ve lived that way.”

When Simon walked out of the throne room, he was tempted to stay one more night in the basement. Not only did it feel much safer, but it would give him the chance to inspect the walls of the strange room with etching. He decided against it, though. The last thing he wanted to do was give Ara or Freya the chance to get their hooks into him, and when he dissolved into a flock of ravens and flew back toward his goblin-scented sanctuary, it was very freeing. Live or die, he’d put this chapter of murder and misery behind him.