Death After Death 216-218

Ch. 216 - To the Grave

At first, the men came at him one at a time. Simon fought each of them in turn, but none of those fights became grand duels. Some of the men were nearly as good with a sword as he was, but against the blade that he’d chosen for today’s combat, they were helpless. It cleaved right through their weapons and armor without any issues at all. 

Weapons like this will make me lazy, he reminded himself as he cut down his fourth opponent. 

In some ways, it was fortunate that he couldn’t just do this whenever he wanted. If he used a sword that left such an obvious path of carnage behind most of the time, it would start some very bad rumors and leave some awful legends about Simon the Butcher in his wake. He didn’t want that, but today, he wasn’t going to leave anyone alive, or undead, or whatever. If you were working for a vampire, you would meet the same end they did, as far as he was concerned. 

After he cut down some of the best warriors the other side had to offer, the rest started to bunch up. He discouraged that by launching another arrow at the eight men who were forming up with pikes and spears on the steps of the inner keep. Then, when they slammed the front door shut on him while he was walking over those smoking corpses, he leveled it with a word of greater force. 

I've got to pace myself, he reminded himself. He could have easily cut his way through the heavy iron-bound doors, just as he’d done with the castle door, but the time for subtlety was done. He’d taken out all the most ready defenders, and he wanted those that were ahead of him to flee before him, which meant that being a little showy was in his interest, even if he could probably only use another two or three major words today. 

“I won’t need nearly that many,” he said aloud as he walked over the shattered doors and the bodies of the men that had been crushed by them. “This place isn’t half the nightmare I thought it would be.”

Really, the castle seemed to be pretty normal compared to what he’d seen. It was a bit undermanned, and it looked a little evil, but even with all of that, he wouldn’t have believed there were vampires hiding out here if he hadn’t killed one of them last night. 

He kept expecting one of them to spring out and attack him or unleash some hideous secret weapon. He had to keep reminding himself that’s not the way these things worked. This isn’t Hollywood. In the daylight, these things are helpless. Fortunately, he had almost six more hours of helplessness before things got dicey. 

As he went, he found limited pockets of resistance, but after only a couple more fights, the strength of these combatants faded from men at arms, or even half-dressed mercenaries, to cook’s boys with knives and maids armed with broomsticks. Though he’d originally told himself he was going to kill everyone here, he quickly decided that he lacked the resolve to slaughter servants and let those people flee. He was certain that their fellow men would find the right way to deal with the collaborators. 

Once he started letting those who were wearing armor or bearing arms flee, the place emptied out in record time, leaving Simon with just enough true believers to be on his guard but no real force left to stop him. “Pity,” he sighed. “I still have one more arrow.”

After Simon had done a quick sweep of the main building and the smaller two- and three-story wood-framed houses on either side, which seemed to be where the servants lived, he finally descended into the cellars. In every horror movie he’d ever seen, this was where the hero ran into the villain. Of course, they made the mistake of doing it at night, which was a lot riskier. 

Simon was happy to learn from their mistakes, though, and did it right, going one room at a time in a search for coffins. That turned out to be a bigger undertaking than he would have thought. Though the castle above wasn’t very large, the basements below were fairly extensive. Some of the rooms, such as those that were used to store wine and cheese, were quite clean and almost pleasant, but once he reached the dungeons, the real horror show started.

The first time Simon opened a door that smelled of death, he knew he’d regret calling for more light, but that was exactly what he did. He whispered a small white flame into existence, and it appeared just above his head, almost like an undeserved halo. It was the most convenient place to put a source of illumination since it would stay out of his way. It wasn’t like he was going to be doing any hiding until he was done purging this place anyway. 

The glow of a minor light spell was enough to show him every gory inch of the blood-spattered feeding room, or butchery, or whatever it was. There wasn’t enough evidence to say why this abattoir existed, but the unmistakably human bones marked it as one of the more vile places he’d ever been, and he quickly moved past it after poking the most intact corpses to make sure none of them moved. 

While he did that, he noted there was some writing carved or scratched into the walls, but with all the gore, it was impossible to read. He was curious, but curious could wait until he’d completed his purge. He didn’t need to be distracted now. 

He thought that was about the worst he’d see, but then he found the cages. The owners of this castle had turned what might have once been a small dungeon into an overcrowded pantry that was every bit as vile as the abattoir he’d just left. Some of the prisoners were too weak to move, and a few looked dead, but all of them had bites on them. Most had half a dozen, at least. 

“They’re keeping these people alive so that they can feed off them over and over again,” Simon murmured to himself in horror. He hadn’t checked the servants or the guards, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been drained once or twice as well.

That tugged at Simon’s heartstrings, and even before the strongest of them were up and begging at the bars, he was already cutting the locks off the cells. It was only when he started to open them that he realized they were begging him to kill them, not free them. 

“Go!” Simon commanded, “You’re free. Get out of here!”

Some did, but most simply sobbed, and Simon left them to their fate as he moved on deeper into this house of horrors. There were some things he couldn’t heal with magic. He knew that. He’d died in some pretty rough ways, but those people had lived some pretty awful lives, and there was little he could do to help them. He just hoped that their next lives were better than this one. 

After that was when he finally found the first coffins. They weren't particularly fancy or well hidden and were only guarded by a door that had been barred from the inside. Simon cleaved through it without issue, and inside, he found three coffins in an otherwise empty room. 

Simon spent a moment looking around for any possible traps. It seemed unlikely, given that these people had to walk through here every day, but perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps they just turned into bats and flew over cursed runes or some bottomless pit trap. 

Still, he found none, and when he opened the first coffin, nothing stopped him.

In the thing, he found a man who was both handsome and pallid, and Simon staked him without a second glance, using the pommel of his sword to hammer it in. The vampire opened his mouth in a silent scream but wasn’t even able to lift a finger in his own defense as he crumbled into ash.

The second coffin was empty, which was worrisome until he realized it probably belonged to the asshole he’d killed the night before. “Maybe they keep spares around,” he said to himself as he opened the third. 

There, he found another man who looked like he might have once been a warrior before someone dressed him up in noble’s clothing instead of armor. He was a bit rough around the edges and probably Murani. Unlike the one he’d just killed, this one managed to struggle weakly and raise a hand to try to ward off Simon, but there was nothing he could do.  

His behavior and appearance were enough to make Simon a little curious as to what this guy’s story was, but he wasn’t about to let him keep breathing until nightfall, and he quickly drove a stake through his heart as well, transforming him into dust and ashes in seconds. 

When both of them were done burning, and nothing remained behind but a foul odor, Simon shrugged and said, “Three down, one to go. Hopefully.”

Truthfully, he had no way of knowing how many there were in total, but he knew there was at least one more. Three coffins were empty, and three vampires were dead, if he included the one he’d killed last night, but none of them had been women, which meant that she was still out there. 

Still, as hard as he tried, he couldn’t find her. He scoured the dungeons twice before he switched to the other outbuildings as the hours ticked by. 

“Think, man, think,” he told himself. “There’s only so many places. Where could she be?”

He’d already searched basements and the bottom floors of every room that didn’t seem to have a basement. He’d also searched the area where the throne room might be in a real castle in case the previous occupants were human and had included human details like a second way out. Such secrets could easily have been repurposed into an extra hidden lair. 

“But if there’s another better hiding place than the nest in the basement, then why weren’t all the coffins there?” he asked himself. “Well, it's either because those were a decoy or because the better spot is too small. That probably rules out a cavern or secret passage, which means it's got to be something stupid. Like, something practically in plain sight.”

Simon looked around again, trying to filter his perceptions through that premise. He considered the well but instantly dismissed it. Instead, after a moment’s thought, he decided it was probably somewhere incredibly unlikely, like one of the towers. 

“Who would look for something that hates sunlight in the place that gets the most sun?” he asked himself. 

That clinched it, and after a brief debate about which one he should check, he decided that considering the ego on these sorts of villains, the highest tower of the keep was the best bet, even if he wasn’t looking forward to running up those stairs. “There’s still time to run and live to fight another day,” he told himself as he eyed the horizon. He had maybe half an hour left until this was over, one way or the other. 

Finding the door that led to the stairs was easy enough, and even the lock only stopped him for a few seconds. Halfway up the tower, he found a new problem. The thing had been physically walled off with bricks. Judging from the work, it had been done rather recently. 

While that was bad, in a way, it was a good sign. If someone was taking the time to brick up stairwells, then there was something worth hiding, and he could only think of one thing that might be: the leader of this whole nightmare. 

Ch. 217 - A Final Secret

Though his chest was still heaving from the run, Simon drew his blade and started chopping through the wall, eager to push through to the next floor. Well, perhaps eager wasn’t the word. He was not eager to run up another flight of steps, but he would do so anyway. He urgently needed to. 

He had less than a half hour between now and when the creature he was hunting woke up, and things would get ugly if he didn’t get this resolved. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be as easy as he’d hoped, even with a fancy magic sword that could cut right through stone. On the other side of the brick wall, someone had very creatively placed another brick wall, and he saw it as soon as he cut a hole wide enough to look through. 

“Well, would you look at that,” he complained. “Someone thought ahead.” The second brick wall wasn’t the problem, of course. It was the idea that there might be more. Even if it only took a minute or two to get through each one, those minutes started to add up after a while, and after his exhaustive search of the dungeons, he was running out of them. 

He was more sure than ever that this was the right way, now, but he was unable to say what other obstacles might exist between here and there. How many more walls would he have to cut through between here and where he was going? How many traps would he have to evade? Would he have enough time for all that? 

“Well, what other options do I have? I definitely don’t have time to run away and try again another day,” he asked himself as he raised his sword again. Then he stopped and considered it. “Maybe I could try going in from above. That’s almost certainly how this Dark Mistress lady gets in and out. So, maybe it’s easier to get in from the top.”

It was a precarious plan. Not only would it burn more magic, but he might very well misjudge the target. It had been a long time since he tried to use force magic like this. He considered that, and after he’d decided that it was worth the risk, he ran back down to the floor below and opened the window. Then he looked up to the top of the tower that rose four more stories above him. 

It was a simple, tapering structure without any obstacles, but if he was right, the way was probably blocked for the next two floors, which meant that he had to go all the way up to the fifth floor, then go down into the fourth, or maybe even the third. Still, it looked doable. He could probably get up there with two or three words of force, depending on where the window was. 

“What if the window is barred too?” he asked himself as he gazed out at the blood-red sunset, trying to weigh all of his options. “Then I’m coming in through the tile roof, and if that doesn’t work… well, then I guess I’m killing myself and trying again next life.”

That was always an option, of course. Simon didn’t like to think about it these days. It went against his worldview, but if he was ever in a situation where he was completely fucked, then he could always just off himself and try again. It would be a shame for the people of this valley, but no one could say he hadn’t done his best. 

Focus on the positive, he told himself as he shook his head to clear it of all the spiraling doubts. Believe in success, for now. Worry about failure when I’m falling to my death.

With that settled, he stepped out onto the large stone window sill, lined up his trajectory, and calmed his racing mind. No amount of what-ifs and worries about how low and red the sun was getting in the sky would help him now. Now, he needed to focus. 

Just as Simon was about to speak the word of power, the image of the last time he’d used the spell in Ionar so long ago came to his mind unbidden. There he’d been, half on fire and trying desperately to arrest his ever-increasing momentum as he edged toward terminal velocity. 

Stop. This is different, he told himself. And even if I fall and die, it’s not like a vampire can reanimate pavement pizza. 

With that comforting thought, Simon said the word and soared skyward like he’d leaped off of a springboard. Once he was in the air, it actually reminded him of the time he hopped around Schwarzenbruck more than the volcano. Back then, he’d treated his entire lifetime like a mana bar for a single level of the Pit. These days, he tended to be more careful because he’d long ago discovered that life was for living, not for speed running. 

Simon slowed as he reached the apex of that impossible leap and took in the scene. The castle was still empty save for the bodies that were still scattered in the courtyard far below him for only a moment before he chose his next target and said, “Oonbetit,” to execute a double jump and arc up again, toward the nearest window. 

That window, at least, was not barred or bricked up. It was just an open window with panes of bubbly glass in it. So, he put away his sword he’d kept out in case he needed it, and when the arc terminated just under the window, he grabbed the window sill and pulled himself up and over it. 

That, as it turned out, was the hardest part of the whole thing, and he grunted and struggled so much that he’d briefly considered using a word of lesser force to put him over the top. Then he lay on the wood floor for half a minute, resting from the exertion, before he forced himself to his feet. 

Here, there was a trapdoor, and it was not bricked up. Hell, it wasn’t even close. It was just lying there, with a steep set of wooden stairs on the other side. Suddenly, just like that, the impossible obstacle he’d faced had been bypassed. 

Simon hurried down the steps and was rewarded by the sight of an empty room and a coffin. “Thank god,” Simon sighed as he went down into the small room below and finally saw the coffin he’d been looking everywhere for. 

This one was different from the others. They’d been made of plain wood, but this one had been covered over in a layer of hammer brass, which made it look much more intimidating. “Definite Boss-level vibes,” Simon whispered as he moved to open it. “It’s a shame that you went to all this effort to avoid your fate, and it’s still going to happen. Better luck next life.”

Well, at least he tried to. The thing didn’t budge. Simon dropped the clever dialog and grabbed the lid with both hands, pulling with all his might, but it didn’t move. 

“Huh, locked from the inside, huh?” he asked. “Good thing I brought a key.” 

He shook the handle harder for good measure, just to make sure, but once he was sure that there wasn’t another way to open it, he gave up on trying and pulled out his sword. No matter how it was locked, it wouldn’t stand up any better than the gate had. 

Simon thrust the blade through the coffin, just under the lid, and sliced it from one end to the other, taking out locks, hinges, armor, and anything else that might be in his way. He’d been tempted just to cut it in half, but he knew that wouldn’t kill the vampire inside, and he didn’t really want to get splashed with vampire blood if he didn’t have to. He had no idea what the consequences of that would be, but he didn’t exactly want to find out. 

Definitely do not want to spend a run as a vampire, he told himself after he’d opened the thing like a soup can. Then he put away his sword, took out a stake, and pushed the lid off onto the floor. “Better you than me, I…” he said as he raised the weapon up. What he saw, though, stopped him cold. 

Simon froze. Despite the fact that he only had minutes, or perhaps even less, he couldn’t move. It wasn’t some dread power of the vampire’s hypnotic gaze, either. He was just utterly shocked. 

The woman he’d been looking for the last few hours, the Dark Mistress of all the other vampires he’d slain, was someone he recognized. It wasn’t some evil creature for the pits of hell. It was Freya. She looked nearly the same as when he last saw her, except for the deathly pallor that made her already pale skin nearly translucent. 

“What the actual fuck,” he gasped. “What? How? This is impossible.”

He knew that this changed nothing and that he should still kill her while he had the time, but knowing and doing were entirely separate things. He couldn’t even begin to conceive of how such a thing might be possible, and the shock that ran through him in that moment was as powerful as any spell he knew. 

That shock cost him his moment. In those last few seconds, while he stood there, completely dumbstruck, the last limb of the sun disappeared below the horizon. That was when her eyes flew open then and snapped him out of it. 

He drove the stake down with all his might then, using both hands. The vampiress, though, on the other hand, reached up languidly with a single hand and stopped his best efforts cold. It shouldn’t be possible, but there was more strength in her slender fingers than there was in his whole upper body. 

She looked at him then, not in anger or hunger, but with a sense of faint recognition. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” she asked, almost ignoring the stake hovering only inches above her heart. As calm as she was, he could see that she thought he had no chance to hurt her, but that overconfidence was something he could take advantage of. He just needed to get her out of his head. 

This isn’t Freya! He screamed at himself. Even if it was once, she’s dead now!

Finally, after several seconds, her eyebrows knitted in irritation as she sucked in her breath and said, “It’s you!”

Simon opened his mouth. He didn’t do it to respond, though. Instead, he growled, “Gervuul Oonbetit!” and directed all the force he could into staking this bitch’s heart to the bottom of her coffin like he had her minions.  

Ch. 218 - Regrets

Simon’s magic surged within him, applying tons of pressure to the stake, but still, she held it. It jittered and shook in his hand as irresistible force met immovable object. Then it exploded, sending wooden shards and jagged splinters into both his hands, her hand, and her chest. 

Simon cried out in pain as he took a step back. Freya seemed almost nonplussed by it, though, and even as she sat up, the jagged wounds that the stake had inflicted on her chest began to heal. 

“What a pity,” she said, “I loved that dress. Please don’t tell me you’ve killed my tailor. It will be ever so troublesome to replace it if she’s gone.”

“You, you can’t be alive!” Simon answered. His denial overpowered even his pain.

“Well, technically, I’m not,” she admitted, still fussing with the shredded top of her dress as she showed far more concern for it than for him. “According to the books on the subject, I’m undead, but you should know all about it. You’re the one that did this.”

“What?” Simon gasped. “I would never! I—”

Freya flickered then. As soon as he started to speak, she glanced up at him with her murderous red eyes. Then, in an instant, she’d bridged the gap between them. She didn’t move or even dash. She just disappeared by her coffin as she reappeared by him and slapped him hard enough across the face to send him sprawling. 

He got back on his feet as quickly as he could without putting any pressure on his ruined hands, but she was not waiting there to pound on him. Instead, she looked down her nose at him from where she stood before. 

“Do not lie to me,” she shouted, showing real emotion for the first time. “I remember you. The blacksmith. You claimed you would cure me so that I would not become a zombie like my beloved Kel, and I didn’t. I became something so much worse than that. All that I’ve become… All that I’ve done is because of you!”

Simon flinched under the weight of those accusations. He didn’t even try to defend himself. He just tried to understand if it could be true. 

“I… All that I did was use the energy of the environment to power the words of greater cure to purge the curse that was within you,” he said. “I don’t even know how one would go about creating a vampire. You have to believe me.”

She laughed coldly then. “All this time, I thought I’d been cursed by some servant of the gods for failing to save my beloved, and the truth was it was just a bumbling fool. I’ll bet you’re the one that killed my darling Hidaran last night, too, aren’t you?”

“The vampire that attacked those villagers?” Simon asked as his mind raced to figure out how he was going to kill her. “Yeah, he died as he lived, violently.”

At this point, it would probably be easier to just kill himself and do this again. If it had been anyone but Freya in that coffin, he already would have. Hell, if it had been anyone but her, he wouldn’t have hesitated. They’d be ash, and he’d be victorious, but this? This was entirely unforeseen, and it made his heart ache as surely as if he’d driven the stake through instead of his own bleeding hands. 

Even now, he was sure there was some way to reverse this. There had to be. 

“What a pity,” she sighed. “He was an excellent lover. That will only make what happens to you next all the more painful. I suppose that while I consider the correct punishment for someone, I shall have to be comforted by Gavarall or Prince—”

“The two bozos in the basement?” he interrupted. “Yeah, gone too. I cleaned out most of the castle while you—”

She flickered again and pulled him off of his feet by his breastplate despite being nearly a foot shorter than him. “How dare you murder my harem. First, you condemn me to this life, and then you destroy it? I will make you rue the day that you—”

As she threatened him, he brought his knee up hard toward her face. He hadn’t expected that to do any good, of course, but then he didn’t expect to be able to actually strike her, either.  He was right on both counts. In response to his blow, she released him, and then, grabbing him by his calf as he fell, she swung him hard into the stone wall.

For a moment, his vision was full of gray fog and afterimages, and it took him several seconds to realize that the world around him appeared to be spinning because he was rolling down the stairs to the next level. He never made it that far. Somewhere before the doorway that would have led to the third floor, there was a brick wall. He was trapped. 

Simon struggled to clear his head as Freya strode down to him one fluid step at a time. She was saying something. Either she was trying to tell him how much the deaths of her pet vampires had hurt her, or she was telling him what awful things she planned to do to him. He had no idea. All he could hear was ringing. 

He couldn’t hear, he could barely think, and his hands were so mangled he might never grip a sword again. He could still speak, though, and right now, that was all he needed. 

He shouted, “Gervuul Barom!” 

Even as he started to speak, Freya figured out what he was up to and dashed toward him again, but somehow, the stairs slowed her down, and by the time she was inches from him, the entire stairwell was bathed in the blinding light of faux sunlight as the tiny sun that Simon imagined faded into existence. 

Freya screamed and staggered backward, even as she started to smolder. Simon had never tried to cast greater light before, and though it worked very well, it obviously wasn’t enough to kill a vampire. It looked like sunlight to him. He could feel the warmth of it on his skin from here, like a real summer’s day. He had no idea how long it would last, but he imagined that was a function of intensity. 

It’s not real sunlight, he thought incredulously. Does that mean if I use a word of metal to make silver, it won’t kill a werewolf? 

He didn’t know the answer, but right now, that was unimportant. He’d gotten what few answers he could, and it was clear that he was entirely outmatched by Freya. So, while she screeched in pain and tried to crawl to safety, he used his teeth to pull out the biggest chunks of wood, then used a word of healing to get his hands working again. His hands were big, deformed mitts that made him look more like a troll than anything. Because of the way his flesh had knitted back together, he had only three fingers on one hand and two fingers on the other, but at least he still had opposable thumbs, and that would have to do. 

Simon grabbed another stake from his belt and charged up the stairs at the burning corpse. He still wanted answers, but he’d come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t getting any, not this run. Hell, maybe not ever, he realized, because the right thing to do here was clearly to go and reset level six so that none of this ever happened. 

He didn’t think about that now. Instead, he ran up behind her, careful not to block the light from his glowing orb, and jammed the stake through her rib cage. Well, he started to. He brought it down hard, but with charred skin, seeing where her ribs were was impossible, and it glanced off one of them. He raised it back up to try again, and then She reached out and dug her claws into one of his calves, ripping through flesh and muscle with equal ease. 

Simon screamed and tried to pull away, but she didn’t let go. Instead, his movement rolled her over. This wasn’t a motion that she seemed to have the strength for under the withering beam of light, but with his help, she could now gaze at him with her lidless eyes. 

He instantly realized his mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it. Once he met her gaze, he couldn’t look away. In fact, he couldn’t do anything at all. All he could do was stare slackly while his leg bled and hope that the light had weakened her enough that she couldn’t speak.

For several seconds, it seemed as though it might have. We might both stand here until sunrise, he thought, hopefully, before she managed to croak, “Extinguish that infernal light at once!”

Canceling a spell was not a thing. Once the power had been invested, it continued until its essence ran out. He couldn’t explain that to the vampire, though. He couldn’t even turn away from her gaze. All he could do was try the option that was the most likely to work.

“Aufvarum Barom,” he said flatly, willing the words of disperse light to dispel the effect. 

It wasn’t enough to extinguish the blazing orb, at least not at first. It muted it by half in seconds, though, and then it slowly dimmed from there. Simon would have loved to turn and watch it so that he could understand how the two magical commands had interacted. He couldn’t, though; there was only one command that mattered now, and she was lying beneath him, claws still sunk deep into his flesh.

“Stay,” she rasped. “Like the dog you are.” Her words lacked strength, but they were full of poison just the same. 

Her flesh was starting to return to her now in patches. Freya’s dress was all but ruined, and she looked like the corpse of a much, much older version of herself, but even as she came alive again, she said nothing. Instead, she rose slowly to her feet, still locking her hateful gaze with his, and when she stood, she hissed and sank her fangs deep into his neck and began to drain him dry. 

It was an uncomfortable sensation, but it didn’t hurt like he expected it to. He ignored all of that, though, and instead tried to will himself to whisper Meiren. It was a word that was both fast and irrevocable in the damage its flames would do. He didn't have time for a greater word, of course, but a fire spell aimed squarely at his cerebellum should be enough to end him forever. 

Still, he couldn’t do it. It was only two syllables. It was pretty much the easiest thing in the world, but all he could do was stand there like a statue. She told me to stay, not to stay frozen, he raged, but it did no good. 

It was only when he was so weak that he collapsed to his knees that she finally stopped drinking. She was a young woman once more, and though she wasn’t quite as lovely as she’d been laying in her coffin, she was far from the charred hag she’d been moments before. 

“Now we will begin again,” she commanded, nearly as youthful as she was when she started the night. “You will tell me everything I wish to know without falsehood or magical trickery, and then, I shall lock you in the bottom of the lowest dungeon and torment you for decades to come. You will not be allowed to die until I allow it, and I shall never grow tired of making you suffer for this insult. Is that understood?”

“Y-yes…” Simon tried to fight the word that clawed its way out of his throat, but in the end, he couldn’t. 

Freya smirked, and said, “From now on, you will address me as Mistress or Your Majesty. Is that understood?”

Simon gritted his teeth and fought again. He might have loved the woman she’d been once, but he was going to find a way to grind the monster before him to dust.