Death After Death PLUS 226-228

Ch. 226 - A Long Time Coming

Sixty-three years, he thought in disbelief as she explained what had happened since he’d been away. Sixty-three years bleeding in a box. Simon was floored. He’d known that it had been a long time, but not that long. He’d thought it had been a couple of decades, not six of them. 

That’s an entire lifetime, Simon realized. 

He was on, what, level 33? That meant that he was fifty or sixty years into the future of the cabin level as soon as he entered it, and now he was sixty years into the future of that level? So, he’d been doing this for a century? His mind boggled at that. 

He’d been a statue for a century, too, or somewhere thereabouts, but somehow this hit him harder. Then, he’d never been defrosted far into his future, and he had trouble processing that. Seyom would still be alive probably, but he would be an old man now and—

When Ara noticed he wasn’t paying attention, she grabbed him by his chin and stared into his eyes. He could feel her trying to force her will on him, the way that other vampires had done before now, but he felt that strange pressure slide right off of him. Even ineffective, though, the sensation was a slap in the face, and it snapped him out of it. 

“I know this a lot, but I need you to focus, Simon,” she explained. “We don’t have a lot of time. They only delay in fear of her, and when they find that she’s not here, the castle will fall in hours, not days.”

“You’re right,” Simon rasped, “I’m sorry. It was a lot to take in. Please start again, from the beginning.”

Ara did just that, though he could tell she was a little annoyed at having to repeat herself, and this time, she gave him a pretty abbreviated version. 

“The last war ended shortly after you were imprisoned,” she explained. “Emma and I were caught two nights later, and I was turned then. That was awful, but I did as the Red Widow commanded, and for a long time, for everyone else at least, things were good.”

“The Red Widow?” Simon asked softly. “That’s a bit theatrical. Is that because I killed—”

“No,” Ara answered flatly. “It’s because no man that my Mistress ever brings back to her bed chambers survives the experience. She never replaced her harem. Instead, she just began to snatch up more and more handsome men from further and further afield. In a way, you actually made it worse, so, unfortunately, you aren’t as important as you think you are.”

Her tone of annoyance only increased then. Simon could see that however sweet and kind she’d been when all of this started, she’d really gotten used to being obeyed in the decades since he’d met her last.

He didn’t interrupt again for a while, even though he felt the urge to at every new revelation. Charia, as it turned out, was not really a unified Kingdom like Brin or Montain, as he’d thought previously. Instead, it was barely a confederation; It had a king, but the post was nearly ceremonial. It was the Mountain Lords scattered through the region that held the real power. 

They finally won against the Murani, eventually, when they banded together. They repelled them from the north, and apparently, even now, several keeps were under construction that would make further wars in the future very unlikely. “Not that they will do us any good in the fighting to come.” 

Simon expected to hear more about peace after that, but apparently, as soon as the Murani were pushed back to the deserts of the north and the foreign lands beyond, Brin attacked Charia. Before she’d even explained that it was a crusade against warlocks and other foul magics in any great detail, Simon was already blaming the Unspoken. 

“Apparently, the warriors in white cloaks have many techniques for disabling mages,” Ara explained, unaware that he already knew that, “But few of them work against vampires. So, even though they came for my Mistress, they were devoured by her instead.”

“What are your impressions?” he asked. “Have you fought them?”

“I—” she started. “I don’t fight. I don’t kill. I just can’t, even after all of this. I mind Mistress Freya’s castle and attend to her needs. Everything else I leave to her.”

“And she has no other lovers or vampire henchmen or whatever?” Simon asked in his uncomfortably gravelly voice. 

“She’s had a few over the years, but none currently. They all died in the crusade at one point or another,” she answered wearily. “I do not think that delving into those details will assist us now.”

Simon wanted to protest and explain that knowing how their enemies killed vampires was the most valuable information of all, but he shrugged mentally and dropped it. Even after feasting on so much blood, he was already starting to fade. Why do you care about staying alive? He asked himself. Death is exactly what you want. 

Apparently, the crusade ended up indecisive and dragged on for years as a series of border skirmishes, just the way that the war with the Murani had turned out for years before. That had been enough to cause a fragile peace enforced only by apathy. Unfortunately, that meant that when the Murani attacked Brin again for the fourth time this century, all of their strength had been spent, and they fell before the horselords. Now, only a few years later, the mountainous region of Charia was poised to do likewise. 

“Every Mountain Lord between here and the old border has fallen,” she explained. “Castle Gravenstone is all that stands between this valley and—”

“What about the rest of the nation, though,” Simon asked. “What about Ionar and—”

“I don’t give a damn about any of those places,” Ara spat. “I woke you to save my family. The rest of them can fend for themselves.”

Simon nodded, disappointed by the answer. He would have tried to stand then, but he was too weak to get out of the coffin, and after decades with a severed spinal cord, he could barely feel his toes. “I’d help, he said finally, but I can’t even walk,” he sighed, feeling every year of his advanced age now that time had caught up with him.

“No,” she agreed, “Not yet, but you are a clever man. You escaped from my Mistress’s cell, and such things are not done. Surely you can come up with some kind of plan to help us. Perhaps you could teach all the men we have under arms magic?”

“I-I’m not sure that would go so well,” Simon answered, suppressing his urge to tell her that was the worst plan he could imagine. Teaching two or three dozen men words of power might win a battle, but they’d kill themselves in a few years from the drain, and that was the best-case scenario. Making them all magical weapons would do better, but “The key is the pass, I think. That is where we should be fighting them, not here at the castle walls.”

“We lack the men for that. If we had hundreds, or—” She started answering. 

“You just said you have a valley full of families,” Simon interrupted. “That’s all the men you need, right there. Give them weapons and tell them to fight for their homes!”

“The men of the valley have never had to fight,” she said, looking confused. “My Mistress has always protected them. She—”

“She isn’t here,” Simon said. “If you want an army, then you have to make one yourself. It’s the only answer. A double rank of men with spears and as many bows as you can find might be enough if you can get the high ground. It would be even better if you could pick ground that is rough enough to break a charge all on its own.”

“I see,” she said coolly, obviously not impressed with that idea. “How long do you think that would take? Two days? Three?”

“I’d drill them for at least a month together before I put them in the field together,” Simon said, suppressing a laugh, “But in times this desperate, a week perhaps, if you include your castle guards as sergeants and other leaders. Any less, and it would just be a slaughter.”

“We don’t have a week,” she answered in a tone that sounded closer to a frustrated child not getting what she wanted than it did to a ruler who wasn’t getting her way. “We have half that. Maybe. I told you. As soon as they grow bold, it could be over in a single day.”

“Well, I don’t know what miracles you want me to work here,” Simon said, feeling his own frustration starting to rise. “If I could fight, I would, but I can’t use magic. I can’t walk, and I can’t…” 

His words trailed off as she turned and left the room without a word. He heard some talking from somewhere further on, perhaps a room or two down the line, and then, a few minutes later, guards returned, pushing a couple more men into the room. The door was then slammed shut and locked, and Ara appeared at the small window while the prisoners scurried back in horror at what was about to happen. 

“Feast on as many men as you like tonight. Regain your strength.” she said, “Then tomorrow night, you can buy us the time we will need for your plan.”

“I’m not sure that killing more men will solve this,” Simon said with a shake of his head, not certain how he felt about killing people now that he was more or less in full control of his faculties, even though the blood racing through their veins sang to him. “It’s decades of damage we’re talking about here. It will take time and—”

“Time is the one thing we do not have,” she said sadly, “Fortunately, I’ve seen the miracles that blood can do. If you drink enough, you will be whole, eventually.”

“Enough?” Simon asked, holding up his arms to show how they were basically skin and bone. He couldn’t see his face, but he knew that he was closer to a ghoul than a vampire. “How many is that? I don’t want to kill dozens just to—”

“My impression of you, brief though it was, is that you are resourceful and are at your best under pressure,” Ara interrupted, her voice going from cool to cold in that moment as she made some decision about whatever it was that had been on her mind this whole time. “The guards are under orders to bring you fresh prisoners each time yours expire. If you are not strong enough to fight tomorrow night, then they will start bringing you children to devour instead.”

Simon couldn’t answer for a long moment. Then he finally stammered, “B-but your sister’s grandchildren…”

“None of them will be related to me, Simon,” she explained. “Why should I care if they live or die? Feast now or feast later. The choice is yours.”

She left after that, and even when he called out to her, she didn’t return. Instead, she left him in the near dark, with only a single lantern between him and the prisoners. He looked at them, then, and though he wasn’t sure they understood what he and Ara had been talking about, he didn’t need to exchange a single word with them to be certain that they knew they were about to die. 

Ch. 227 - A Murder

Despite his protestations, his willpower was not as strong as he wanted to believe that night. The two prisoners she left behind didn’t last half an hour and the two that were brought after that were devoured even more quickly. 

Simon might not have cared for it, but he had little choice in the matter. There was a starving animal inside of him, and though he could chain it down and away from the light when he was alone, as soon as something with a pulse was led into his cage, it broke its chains and ripped them to pieces. 

The first two were the messiest, mostly because he had to fling himself from his coffin and crawl after them like some kind of zombie, with his legs flopping uselessly behind him. While he devoured the first, the second managed to wrestle one of the swords embedded in his coffin free and stab Simon, but he barely noticed as blood filled his mouth, and he felt another’s life flow through him. 

He ripped the man with the weapon apart when he finally got past his guard, and when he was dead, too, Simon was covered in blood. That bothered him less than he thought it would, and when he stood once more, he had only a little regret about what he had done. 

Executing prisoners was something he was normally comfortable with. He’d done it before. Draining his enemies with an empowered weapon to fuel his magic was something he’d made peace with, too. This was only a little worse than both of those things combined if he set aside the gore, yet to him, it felt a boundary he probably should never have crossed. 

There’s nothing I can do about it now, though, he decided, even as he tried to figure out what damage all of this was doing to his freshly positive karma score as he waited impatiently for the guards to bring him fresh victims. He could walk a little now, so Ara’s plan was working. When I’ve saved this valley, I can die. Then, I can repent for a life or two. Maybe I can become a monk or a vegetarian or something.

Simon wasn’t sure what he would do later. For now, he would feast, and then he would fight, and hopefully, somewhere in there, he would die. Then, he would go back to the early levels and make sure Freya never became this creature, even if that cost him the chance to visit his son again. 

His time with the dragon taught him one thing, Simon wouldn’t erase the boy as he thought he would have previously. He would just move to a different timeline where he’d never see the boy again. That was sad, but he could live with that separation a lot more than the idea that Freya would keep slaughtering innocents and causing depravities over and over again.

By the time the sun rose, Simon was curled up in his battered coffin and crusted in blood. He wasn’t in much worse shape than he’d been as an old man toward the end of his last life in Ionar, and he knew that with more death, he would only strengthen further. What he didn’t know was what other powers he might have at his disposal.

Vampires have weird magics all their own, he reminded himself just before his consciousness was extinguished by the weight of the sun rising slowly above him. It was something he would need to ask Ara about tomorrow. 

At sunset, he arose, and then, when his door was unlocked, he staggered through the dungeon toward the keep where he found the vampiress. “See, I told you that you could walk with proper motivation,” she said with a cold smile. “Now let’s get you armed and—”

“Wait,” Simon interrupted, “Before I get a sword and whatever else, I want to know, how do you use the rest of your powers?”

“Rest of my powers?” she asked. “Like the mist and the gaze? You just sort of will it, and it happens. Those powers sort of… build over time. I didn’t have them at all for the first decade of being like this. I’m not sure how being in torpor so long will affect their development, either.”   

That seemed a little oversimplified, but rather than tell her that, Simon tried to reach within himself while she continued to speak, and he found that there was definitely something there. With a little effort, he could even feel himself begin to dissipate, but he stopped almost immediately because it was unnerving. It reminded him of the feeling of slipping away to nothing when he’d been buried for so long. 

“See, you’re getting it,” she nodded. “My men saw a few scouts on horseback come down from the pass earlier, but beyond that, nothing. They’re no doubt gauging the threat level. If they return to the rest of their army with good news, then that will be the beginning of the end.” 

Simon nodded. More than anything, he wanted a shower. He had no reflection to study, but from the way the few mortal men around him reacted, he looked every bit as hideous as he thought he might.

Normally, that would have bothered him, but right now, it was probably an advantage. Not only would it be easy enough to terrify his enemies. It made it easier to pretend that he was someone else. When he put on his proper, flabby flesh again, he’d be Simon, and he’d do the right things that Simon would do. For now, he could do whatever he wanted, and those deeds would belong to the monster that he was grateful he couldn’t see in the mirror.

Simon picked out a sword that would do, along with a buckler. In both choices, he favored weapons that were smaller than usual because he wanted to get within arm's reach rather quickly so he could use his fangs, and there was no point in denying it. In terms of armor, they had only poor choices. Nothing available was built for anyone as tall or slender as he currently was. He was still skin and bones, with only a few strands of lean muscle, so tonight, he would have to go without. Given how quickly he healed, he didn’t think that would be a problem. 

When he left the castle walls, he felt like a beast as much as a man. He was far enough away from anywhere that he probably should have borrowed a horse, but he didn’t expect he’d need it for long. 

He carried no pack or torch. He didn’t even have a bow because he didn’t trust his clawed fingers and shaky hands to use one correctly. He was just a scarred and withered abomination that refused to die, and as he strolled down into the valley, he took a long look around, then he sniffed at the wind, looking for anything that didn’t belong. 

He’d been locked away from the world for decades, and inhaling now was almost too much, but he’d take that compared to the isolated hell he’d endured for so long. He smelled dozens of meals being cooked, along with hundreds of hearth fires. He smelled the scents of man and beast and, most of all, the damp smells of nature. He wasn’t interested in any of those, though, and sifted through them quickly, looking for something altogether more appetizing. He was looking for the scent of blood.

He found it in several places in the wide valley, which wasn’t surprising given how many animals would be slaughtered by these farmers every day. Every barnyard chopping block and village butcher was a distraction. 

Each time he smelled manure or clean fresh meat hanging somewhere, he ignored it. Instead, he sought out the tang of oiled weapons and the smokey blaze of a campfire. After ten minutes of searching, he finally found a likely target at the far end of the valley, in the woods there, at the base of the mountain. 

That was about the place he would have guessed that scouts would hide based on tactics alone. Still, he tried not to let those thoughts prejudice his decision. Not when he could let hunger guide him instead. 

“You know, if you run, you might just make it before sunrise,” he said to himself in a growl that sounded almost human. Simon laughed at his own joke, at least until he settled into a coughing fit. 

Once that was done, though, he focused. Simon had used many kinds of magic and gotten very good at impossible things. The idea of being a mist seemed a bit too disperse for him just now, but Vampires could turn into other things too, at least according to the dimly remembered movies. He didn’t like bats too much, though, so he decided to try ravens first. 

It’s just like the saying, as the crow flies, he thought to himself wryly as he imagined himself as a murder of crows. That wasn’t so hard. He wasn’t really a person anymore. He was murder. Who was to say what shape that murder would take. 

For a moment, he felt himself starting to burst apart at some unseen seams, and then, after only a little hesitation, he flew apart into pieces of darkness. One second, he had two eyes, four limbs, and, thanks to his mangled hands, seventeen digits. The next, he had eighteen eyes, just as many wings, and he was soaring in all different directions in a way that he found to be dizzying until the nine crows that made up who he was slowly reformed into a flock and began to soar over the valley. 

He panicked in those first seconds and very nearly tried to pull himself back together into a man, but he resisted the urge. This is fine, he told himself. I can do this. 

It was chaotic and frightening, but as they spread out throughout the sky and adopted some sort of pattern to their behavior, he found that seeing through more than a dozen pairs of eyes wasn’t nearly as insane as he would have thought it would be. His sense of smell had completely vanished in this form, but his compound vision was sharper than it had any right to be. 

He could pick out dozens of tiny details from each farmstead and hamlet he passed over. How are vampires able to do this? He asked himself. Draining energy to fuel their hideous unlife curse, he got, at least, based on his current understanding of magic. Healing themselves quickly and preternatural strength even made sense, but the rest of it? He had no idea. He added it as one more question that he hoped to understand one day. 

Tonight wasn’t about understanding, though. It was about sending a message, and after half an hour of flying across the valley, he sighted a small triangle of campfires in the woods, well off of the main road. While there were a few houses in the woods, too, the only tents he saw belonged to the men around those fires, and the bronze scale mail that they wore told him that they were here for a fight. 

Simon landed in the trees around the camp, well out of the firelight, so as not to draw attention to himself. Then, instead of attacking immediately, he merely observed and listened. 

Their armor and accents might be foreign, but other than that, the scene reminded him of any one of the bands of armed men he’d led in various wars and skirmishes over his many lives. These weren’t evil people. They were just people fighting for their cause. In their minds, they almost certainly saw themselves as liberators as much as conquerors. They would take this land, but they would do so for the good of the people who lived here already. 

Simon heard strains of that in what the men said, between raunchy jokes and reminiscing about previous battles. It was clear that they’d decided that the dread vampiress, whom they referred to simply as the Widow, or alternately the Widowmaker, was no longer here and that their army could march on the valley with impunity. 

Only their captain seemed unconvinced, and he rebuffed the words of the rest of his men with statements like, “We’ll give the place one more sweep tomorrow. Then, If there’s nothing to find, we’ll be back with the main body of the army before nightfall.”

“What’s the rush?” someone quipped. “This is the easiest duty I’ve had in weeks. I say we be extra thorough, just to make sure.”

Everyone laughed at that except for Simon. The captain’s caution was admirable, he decided, however, in this case, it was going to get everyone in his group killed. 

Ch. 228 - Red Sunrise

When Simon reformed, it was only a few feet from the nearest sentry. The man had just enough time to look to the trees and wonder what had agitated the birds, but not enough to raise a defense or an alarm as Simon lunged for him. 

It was not a graceful attack. He was still half dizzy from the feeling of having legs and seeing out of only two eyes again. He was hungry, too. The strange transformation magic had sapped what little strength he had. Still, none of that would save the watchman. 

Simon’s trembling, misshapen hands covered the man’s mouth even as his fangs sank into the guard’s jugular, and he started to drink deeply. The soldier was able to make a muffled scream and even draw his curved saber, but with the way that Simon was holding him, he couldn’t bring it to bear before he began to weaken. 

Simon bore the man to the ground with his weight more than his strength, and as he did so, he noticed that the guard had two wooden stakes tucked into his belt. So they’re ready for me, he told himself. There were countless nights when all he’d longed for was to have a weapon like that which he could plunge into his own heart, now though he wanted to feed more than he wanted to die. 

Before he could give that more thought and decide whether he should take one of those with him, there were sounds in the darkness. It occurred to Simon only slowly that he drank his victim’s lifeblood, that they were words. Someone nearby had heard the brief commotion. They were checking on the man who he was draining. 

Simon warred with himself then. The bestial, instinctual part of him that had grown so strong during those long, dark years bricked into a coffin wanted to keep feasting until the final drop. It didn’t care that it wasn’t the right move and that they would get caught. It was nothing more than a dog with a bone. 

The rational part of Simon forced it to break free. The man wasn’t dead yet, but he was too enervated to do much but lie there. With great effort, Simon unlatched his fangs from the soldier’s neck and then dragged the man deeper into the nearby brush. 

Then, once he was sure that they were hidden from at least a cursory search, Simon drew his short sword and waited. It was those two actions that made all the difference because moments later, he saw a pair of soldiers with their weapons out creeping through the moonlit clearing. 

“I’m telling you, I think it came from over here,” one guard told the other. 

If they’d caught him lying on the ground sucking the dregs out of their friend, they would have certainly cut him to pieces. As it was, though, as much as he wanted that, it was him who had the upper hand now. Simon waited until the point of their closest approach and then drove his short sword through the throat of the nearest one. After that, he pounced on another that was a few feet further away. 

That struggle didn’t go as easily as the first one had, both because he got his sword up in time to impale Simon through the stomach and because he wore a gorget. If he’d screamed for help, he might have lived, but instead, he was too fixated on trying to kill Simon himself, right up until Simon grabbed the man’s helmet with both hands and used it as leverage to spin his neck almost completely around before he lay still. 

Simon wanted to feast on his corpse while the blood was still warm, but his body rebelled at the taste. So, instead, he devoured the last drops of life in the man who was still flailing and drowning in his own blood. When his heart had beat its last, Simon drew his sword and rose to his feet. The wound that the guard’s soldier had inflicted on him closed almost as soon as the sword was removed. 

“Well, that’s handy,” he said as he looked down and felt the smooth, pale skin.  

He’d been stronger in plenty of other lives than he was right now. He’d certainly been far stronger the night that he helped Ara and her sister escape from the castle, but he was strong enough to slaughter these bastards now, or at least give a good showing and die in the attempt. 

Simon crept through the trees toward the light of the campfire and the smells of life. Part of him worried that resisting his growing hunger would be the real enemy here. Fighting these men would be one thing, but resisting the urge to drain them mid-battle was something entirely different. It was an ever-present temptation, and he could see any number of ways that it might cost him his life. 

He approached from the far side from where the soldiers had tethered their horses to a picket so as not to startle them. Then, he observed, looking for any warlocks. He’d fought the Murani enough times now to be certain they had magic in the mix somewhere. 

I might even be able to use those suicide bomber necklesses they like to wear as a distraction, he told himself. 

Simon studied the jovial group for several long minutes before deciding on the two most likely users. One appeared to be the captain, and his breastplate definitely had runes of power etched into it. The other was a quiet man near the far side of the fire. None of the men around the fire really looked like a mage to him, but then, he usually didn’t look like a mage himself, and excepting this life, he definitely was. 

The problem was that he could only take one of them first before everything exploded into chaos. Who’s the bigger threat? Simon asked himself. 

In the end, he decided that the captain was the greater threat, but Simon chose to kill the other guy first anyway. That was based solely on the familiar amulet he glimpsed as the quiet man shifted and talked about going to bed for the night. 

Simon could wait for all of them to fall asleep, of course. Killing them one by one in the night until he was finally caught was a seductive plan, but he’d already started the clock on himself with the first three deaths. As soon as someone went to relieve those men, he would be discovered. 

So, instead of doing this slowly, he decided to start with a bang. Simon stole out of the night as fast as he could, with his sword still sheathed, and ripped out the throat of his warlock. Then he pushed him toward the fire as he leaped back into the night. 

Everyone was on their feet then, drawing weapons and shouting in alarm as they tried to understand what had just happened. Most of them were so focused on him that they completely forgot what a ticking time bomb their mage was, and when the man expired and detonated, most of them were washed in a wave of fire. 

It lasted only a moment, but as soon as it dimmed, Simon was ready. He burst out of the shadows once more. This time from the other side of the fire, holding his sword and shield. He took one man in the eyes and another in the guts before his sword got bound up on the second man’s hip. So, he smashed a third in the face with his shield and stole his sword to continue the fight. 

After that, it was just a bloodbath. There were screams of pain and shouts of alarm, but more than that, there was blood and death. It overpowered the smell of smoke and charred flesh, and as steel rang against steel, he lost himself in the flow of battle.

Normally, Simon was a careful fighter. He created opportunities and then pressed his advantage wherever he found it. He used positioning and timing to leverage opportunities against his enemies, but not today. Today, he was a demon, and no matter how many times swords glanced off his ribs or severed tendons in his arms, he came back stronger and fiercer. 

With the cinders scattered everywhere by the mage’s dying blast, the battlefield the cramped forest battlefield was dominated by shadows to human eyes, but Simon could see everything, and as he moved between the small knots of fighters desperately trying to figure out who was their ally and who was their enemy, he left only death in his wake. 

Once Simon took down the captain in the enchanted breastplate, though, the fight was over. The man’s sword had glowed faintly and sheared right through Simon’s buckler, but the healing magics that seemed to be stamped into the man's armor were entirely overwhelmed as Simon dropped his own weapons and grabbed the man’s sword hand, forcing his swing to continue until his own enchanted sword was embedded deep into his own chest. 

The light of the blade went out slowly, but it told Simon enough to say that there was no point in him using it. Unlike the unspoken blades, which were powered by strikes on the victim, the Murani blades seemed to be powered by their own wielders, which wasn’t very useful when you were a vampire. 

Simon left him there as the survivors fled into the woods and then spent the next few hours hunting them down. The last few he took his time with, allowing the inner predator inside of him to break free once more so he could hunt them down and drain them one by one. 

It was only when all of that was done, and he returned to his blood-soaked senses, that he noticed how late it had gotten. 

Simon unfolded into a flock of ravens once more and raced the sunrise back to Castle Gravenstone with a feeling of growing dead. It was still far too dark to see his dark wings in the sky, but even so, it was far too close to day to still be out and about, and that rising terror forced him to beat his flock’s wings ever faster. He had been nine crows when he left, but now he was eleven. He had no idea if that was important or not in the grand scheme of things. Right now, all that mattered was finding somewhere dark and safe as the minutes crept by. 

He considered simply finding somewhere between here and there to wait out the day. If he’d known the valley better, he would have done exactly that.  A basement or an abandoned goblin lair would be bearable if only he could have it right now. He couldn’t, though. Anywhere he picked might leave him vulnerable to any number of hazards, and no matter how much he wanted to die consciously, his instincts feared that almost as much as the sun. 

So, he kept going, and as the strip of blue on the horizon began to brighten, he reached his destination with only minutes to spare. There, he reassembled himself in a swirl of feathers and shadows in the courtyard and staggered toward the door that led below.

This time, his weakness wasn’t because he was starving or even because of the strange power he was using. It was because he was out of time. Despite being underground, he grew weaker with every step in those final moments before sunrise. 

By the time he reached his coffin in the dungeon, there was no time to give anyone a report on how the night had gone, but of course, he didn’t have to. The waiting army would receive no update because everyone was dead, so they would not march. He had bought Ara exactly the time she hoped he would.