Death After Death PLUS 220-222

Ch. 220 - Locked Away

Simon was there for nearly a week before his captor showed herself. By the time he next saw Freya, he was completely overwhelmed with the thirst, but at least for now, he did his best to ignore it completely. 

The only thing he couldn’t ignore was his new fangs. He was unable to stop toying with them with his tongue. He couldn’t help it. They felt so strange and foreign in his mouth. 

Despite the fact that his cell was pitch black, he could keep track of time fairly easily by the feeling of dread that forced him into a dreamless torpor each time the sun rose. It was terrifying. It wasn’t so much sleep as it was lapsing into a coma and praying that he never woke up again. 

Unfortunately, each night he was disappointed, and each time he was disappointed he carved another mark into the wall so that he would remember how many days he’d been down here. 

She thinks this is as bad as being a statue? He thought defiantly as he sifted a handful of coarse sand through his fingertips. Here, he could still move and breathe. Even better, he still had a goal, and that was to die. A statue couldn’t do any of those things. It could only endure forever.

Such thoughts assured him that he hadn’t completely lost his mind nor that it seemed likely that it would in the near future. Simon noticed when they repaired the door to his cell and replaced the broken door held shut by rubble with a stout oaken slab that was barred from the outside. This one had a window at the top. It was barred, so escape was impossible, but sometimes people looked in on him after that. They never spoke to him, though; they simply held up a torch and looked at him for a bit before leaving him in the dark. 

That was enough to make him resent sparing the staff of this place. None of the faces he saw were proper guards. He’d killed all of those, but only a few days later, Freya already had people back to work. Maybe if I’d slaughtered everyone, they’d have been more wary, he sighed. 

Once, he woke up to find a rat in his cell. He felt his mouth water at the idea of draining its meager life force. That was a feeling he knew well in the form of the word of transfer, though. So, he resisted it and, capturing the thing, tossed it from his cell uninjured. He didn’t know if the thing had been tossed in as dinner or if it had crept in. 

I will not give in, he promised himself. I will wait for the hunger to take me. 

That was easy to say, but it became harder to believe with every day that passed. Simon’s heart no longer beat. It had been replaced with a black hole and every day, it grew larger and deeper, demanding to be filled. 

When Freya finally made an appearance, she didn’t bother to open the door. She just flowed around it as a fine mist before she reconstituted before him. She must have feasted quite a bit in the last week because she was as young and beautiful as he’d ever seen her in that moment. He, on the other hand, was dying. 

Simon was dead already, of course. He couldn’t die again. At least, he couldn’t without a stake to his heart, but he felt like he was just the same. 

He no longer had the strength to try to kill himself. He’d attempted that a dozen times before he’d given up. Now, those deaths, combined with the thirst, made him so weak that he could scarcely do more than sit up when she arrived. 

“Not so mighty now, are you?” she laughed. “It’s only been a week, and my home is all but back to normal. You, on the other hand, have transformed from witch hunter to wretched.”

“Normal, huh?” Simon spat. “You were able to replace your lovers so quickly, after all. Good for you.”

That drew a harsh look from her, but she didn’t take the bait. In his weakened state, he was pretty sure she could kill him with a hard enough beating, even if he couldn’t do it himself. She seemed to have similar thoughts, though, because she just smiled coldly, showing off her fangs, and said. “No, your suffering has only just begun. I just came down here to disabuse you of a few… misconceptions that you seem to have about your current state before I leave you to rot.”

“No, thanks,” Simon said as he laid down and rolled over to huddle against the wall. “I’m good. Dust to dust and all that.”

“According to the stories, vampires can live for decades or even centuries without a drop of blood; that’s your first mistake,” she said cruelly, ignoring him. “I wouldn’t know because I’m well-fed every night, but I think going at least a year between devouring someone probably wouldn’t kill me. It would just make me miserable.”

Simon was afraid of that, too, but he said nothing. A decade or a century, though, didn’t really matter. If she just buried him alive, eventually he would die, and eventually, he’d make his way back to his cabin, where he would make sure all of this never happened. 

Even as he contemplated all of that, his captor kept gloating. “You also seem to think that you can control the thirst, but after a few days, it will control you. You’ll be begging to feast on rats and worms in less than a week, and after that, it will only get worse for you. Once you start begging to be fed, I plan to brick up your little room and check on you every few years. Perhaps I will show you off once a decade on the anniversary of my ascension.”

She went on like that for some time, but Simon ignored her. As long as he wasn’t looking at her, she couldn’t compel him to do anything, it would seem. After a few more minutes of explaining how awful she was going to make his life, Freya eventually left him in the dark. It was only then that he smiled. She truly seemed to have no idea that he’d already spent lifetimes, on and off, wrestling with the very addiction that consumed her. 

This was as bad as it had ever been, of course, even as he lay dying in Ionar, but he could cope. At least, he thought he could. As the weeks passed, one scratched-out day at a time, he could feel the urges growing ever stronger. Every few days, rats would reappear in his room. Though Simon never saw his jailers add them, he was sure that was what they were doing. It was a petty torment, but each time, it was harder to throw them away. 

After Simon had been in that living hell for a month, Freya upped the ante. First, she did so by leaving her bloody victims just outside his door where he could smell them. Then, after that, by leaving bowls of blood on the ground just outside of his door, where he could see them if he looked out of his tiny window. 

Those sights doubled his hunger and made it burn out of all control, but he still took the opportunity to try to call the mirror in that dark reflection. Unfortunately, no matter how he tried to invoke it, it wouldn’t come. 

At first, Simon thought that was because he couldn’t use his magic anymore, but after a couple of hours of trying, he decided the problem was deeper than that. “Right,” he reminded himself. “Vampires don’t have reflections.”

That, at least, was enough to make him laugh, which did him a world of good. He chuckled about that for days on and off, which made all of his other sufferings a little better. It was a stupid reason for one of his powers not to work, but he could hardly deny it. The mirror had once told him that it had trouble finding him on some levels unless it was called, and without a reflection, Simon was almost certainly invisible. 

Simon suffered in silence, even when Freya started bringing her victims to his door and devouring them in front of him. Sometimes, she even offered to let him have a taste, and though every fiber of his being wanted to leap up and do just that, he refused to let it. Instead, he sat there, doing his best to meditate her and her bloody feast right out of existence. 

That annoyed her more than anything else he’d done to date, and two days later, they started installing manacles on the walls of his cell. At first, he thought that they might be for him so that she could torture him more. Up until now, she’d refrained from physical torture, preferring to let her psychological torments slowly do the damage instead. Still, it was only when they’d installed a second set that he ruled that out and grew curious. 

What is she up to, he wondered. 

Simon didn’t have to wait long to find out. Two days later, on day eighty-nine of his imprisonment, his door was unlocked, and two women were brought inside by guards with torches. They said nothing to him as they bound both of the young women to the wall with both their wrists above their heads. 

Freya was there too, but Simon ignored her as he studied the women. There was a sense of familiarity to both of the women, and it was only after studying them that his eyes widened in alarm, and he realized it was the daughters of the farmer he’d saved the first night. 

“Ah, so you did figure out my game,” Freya smiled as she noted the look of recognition in his eyes. “I’d wondered if you’d be so far gone that I’d have to explain all of this to you.”

Both of the other women squirmed silently, but they didn’t dare scream. Not in the presence of this monster. They only cowered, so it was Simon who spoke next as the guards locked the bindings and retreated silently. 

“You really are a monster,” Simon grunted as he got to his feet for the first time in weeks. “Throwing away these girls' lives as pawns just to make me suffer.”

He’d grown steadily weaker for the first week. After that, he’d flat-lined at the pathetic state he was in now. He was skin and bones, but he was skin and bones that would not die. 

“I’m not throwing them away,” Freya smiled wickedly, showing off her fangs. “That will be your job. Even though I have to chain them to the wall so they don’t find a way to end your miserable existence by day, they are my guests, and they will stay here until you make a decision.”

“I’ve already made my decision,” Simon said, ignoring the way that the smell of living humans made his mouth water. “I’m not eating them or anyone else. I’d rather die.”

“I admire your optimism,” Freya said, “But even if you manage such a reckless feat, you will only kill them both. I will let one free when you drain the other one dry. If you will not do that, then the blood of both girls will be on your hands.”

Simon’s shock at her wicked plan must have shown on his face, because Freya laughed then. It was a terrible sound. She took the last lantern with her as she left the room and started down the hallway, leaving the three of them locked inside that room together in the dark. Her voice carried a long way down here, and her terrible mirth echoed down the hallway long after she was gone. 

Ch. 221 - Madness

It had been a long time since Simon had been truly stunned by anything, but the terrible trap that the vampiress had put him in had been completely unexpected. “I-I’m not going to hurt you girls,” he reassured himself as he sat down against the door, as far from them as possible. “I’m so sorry that I got you involved in this.”

“What happened?” the younger one whined. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty. “You said you were going to slay this witch! You promised us!”

“And I very nearly did,” Simon nodded tiredly, trying to ignore his rising guilt along with the frantic way that the hearts of both women were beating in their chests. That was even worse than smelling them. The sound of warm blood flowing through their bodies made his stomach growl as his body slowly came back to life and prepared to feed. 

“This wouldn’t have happened!” the girl screeched. “It would never have happened if—”

“That’s enough, Emma,” the older girl chastised her sister. She might have been twenty-five, but it was hard to say. Simon felt so old these days that even forty-year-olds looked young to him. “He did what he could. What happened to Papa and Mama wasn’t his fault.”

“What happened to them?” Simon asked. “Freya… the vampiress, she killed them?”

“In front of us,” the older sister nodded. “She ripped the farm apart looking for something called a portal, but she couldn’t find it.”

Simon sighed at that. She’d listened to Simon as she’d forced him to tell her everything, but apparently, she didn’t understand. While he didn’t know exactly where the portal to the next level was, he was pretty sure it was on the farm that belonged to these two girls or in the castle, depending on what exactly this level wanted him to do. No matter where it was, though, it wouldn’t appear without him.  

He sighed. The mere fact that Freya had picked out this farm because of that fact made this a lot more his fault than it had been a moment ago. He had no idea what the right answer was now, but he knew he didn’t have long to decide. He couldn’t look at either of the girls without getting hungrier, but looking away from them didn’t help much either. He was fairly sure that this was more than he could tolerate for very long. 

Today, he could handle it, and maybe tomorrow he could too, but if he had to wake up day after day to the sound of beating hearts and the sight of beautiful girls with throbbing carotid arteries, he knew he was going to snap. Even if he didn’t, in a few days, they'd die of dehydration. He doubted Freya would make it that easy, though. 

She’ll draw this out, he told himself. She’ll let them waste away for a month as they starve to death in front of me. The more they suffer, the more I suffer, and that’s what she wants. 

He needed to make a decision and then act fast. Unfortunately, the older sister was faster than his sluggish brain and made up her mind before he’d even figured out what all his options were. “I want you to do it,” she said calmly. “I want you to kill me. It’s the only way to save Emma.”

“No! Ara, you can’t!” the other girl cried out. 

Simon only sat there quietly, his face in his hands as he tried to block out both of their tearful voices. Their suffering only made his thirst burn brighter inside of him.   

They continued like that for several minutes before Simon wiped the drool from his mouth and said, “I meant what I said before. Both of you are getting out of here.”

“How?” Ara asked. “If you could have escaped so easily, wouldn’t you have done so already?”

Simon nodded ruefully, but before he could agree with her point, Emma said, “Why can’t you just use your magic? Like you did to heal Papa?”

“Because I…” Simon trailed off as his world spun on those implications. 

For a moment, his mind had tried to tell him that the only way they could all escape was if he drank their blood and then used it to fuel his magic. In theory, that might work, but that was just the thirst talking. In reality, there was an imminent, more practical solution: he could just teach them how to cast a couple spells necessary to break free from this dungeon. 

While he hated the idea that he’d be shortening their lives if he did this, it was the only way to save them. He thought about it for several seconds, though, before he spoke again. He had to because every other path led right back to drinking his fill, and honestly, once he started to devour the blood of either girl, he wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to stop. 

“Because I can’t…” he continued cautiously. “But you can. You both can, I think.”

“We can what?” Ara asked. “Use magic? Doesn’t that damn your soul as badly as being a vampire?”

“Magic does nothing to harm your soul. It, but it burns your life away one spell at a time,” he explained. “It's dangerous stuff, and I’ve never taught anyone before for that reason, but it might be your only way to get out of here.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to to save Emma,” Ara said with conviction. Emma agreed, too, but Simon was a little more concerned about her temperament. 

He gave it a few minutes thought and then began his explanation. He told the girls how imagination, more than anything else, was what channeled the energy that they summoned. “To speak a word of power correctly is to summon its energy, but without a tight grip, it could go wild.” As he told them that, he recalled his early experiences with the greater word of fire. It was not the most forgiving teacher, and he’d burned out his throat more than once by failing to harness it properly. 

Still, he’d already decided that he wasn’t going to give them the greater word. Even normal words would do enough damage to them. They would practice with lesser words, then escape with regular words, and somewhere in the chaos, Simon would die. It was the perfect plan. 

At first, the only good all of his explanations did was to give the girls hope and keep his hunger at bay. While he was focusing on teaching them, he couldn’t very well focus on ignoring their heartbeats, and that noise taunted him relentlessly. 

Fortunately, by the time he was done with the theory behind all of this, just before sunrise, teaching them had opened his eyes on a couple of issues. He’d had whole lifetimes to think about some aspects of magic, but he'd never actually tried to teach anyone before, and the results were illuminating. Mostly, it was how fast they were able to learn the basics. That left him questioning a lot of his assumptions. 

Speaking a couple words perfectly wasn’t so hard, and though they both complained about the pain and the taste of sulfur after a few attempts, they cast their first spell with less effort than he did, and after a few tries of “Aufvarum Barom,” there were two tiny specks of light floating there in the absolute darkness of their cell. Ara’s was an ivory mote not much bigger than a firefly, and Emma’s was a diffuse cloud of glowing blue glitter not much bigger than his fist. Neither of them put out as much light as a torch, but it was a start. It was undeniable proof that magic could be taught to someone who couldn’t see the auras. 

The Unspoken were right, he realized as he watched those motes drift throughout the room. At least a little. If this knowledge got out in a major way, it would sweep through the world like wildfire. That was a dumb realization, though, he decided after a moment. It already is sweeping through the world, just not this small part of the world.  

Simon didn’t try to explain any of that to the girls. He merely congratulated them and told them, “It's an excellent first step.” He promised to teach both of them more in the morning, but in return, he extracted a promise from each of them that neither would try to use any magic while he slumbered. “Tomorrow, you will learn the word of force and perhaps one or two more but do not practice without me. Not only could you alert the guards, but you could do serious damage to yourselves.”

The last part was mostly a lie. As near as Simon could tell, screwing up a spell was a little hard on the throat, and he was pretty sure the energy involved went to waste, but that was about it. Still, they didn’t know that, and while he wouldn’t mind if they tried to kill him in his sleep, he’d rather help them escape first. 

Torpor took him a few minutes later. He had no choice in the matter. He could feel the sun rising, and that terrible light was enough to make his half-starved form curl up into a ball like a beaten dog. He would have done anything to escape it, and every time he went through this, he wondered how that third vampire had managed to put up any fight at all while there was light in the sky. 

The following night, their situation was unchanged, yet he still didn’t start immediately. He couldn’t, not when he knew that Freya would have to come and see if he’d given in yet. Sure enough, less than an hour into the evening, that mist reentered their cell, and she materialized. 

“Both of them are still breathing?” she taunted. “I have to say, I’m a little impressed. You have more willpower than I gave you credit for, wizard.”

Simon wasn’t sure if that last word was a not-so-subtle hint that she knew what he was doing, but it didn’t matter. It was their only option. He didn’t try to sleuth that out; he just pretended that it was all he could do to resist killing those girls and stuck to short answers with the occasional hiss or long look at Emma or Ara. 

Freya was amused by that, but when it became apparent that he was not, in fact, going to give in, she left. “Maybe we’ll have better luck tomorrow,” she said before she drifted away through the cracks in the door. 

After she was gone, they got to work immediately. This was the night he wanted to escape before either girl was too weakened by hunger or thirst, but if they weren’t ready yet, then it would have to be tomorrow instead. 

“Either just before dawn tonight or just after sunset tomorrow,” he explained. “We either get you out then, or we die trying.”

Simon gave them both a crash course on lesser force and fire after that. Force was for breaking their manacles and the door, while fire was for any guards they happened to encounter between here and the gate. 

Both of them learned those words as quickly as the light, but he was a little concerned with how sloppy the lines in the sand were when they used force. Using small amounts of force effectively meant using it in very small lines, thinner than a sword blade. Both girls seemed more comfortable wielding sledgehammers instead, which was inefficient. Sledgehammers would need greater force, and they might well break their wrists in the process. 

Still, as dawn approached, he directed them on what to do to break free. They needed to move, now while he could still resist devouring them. His crash course would have to be enough. 

Ch. 222 - Break Out

It was only when they tried to use words of power rather than minor words of power that he noticed any real difference between the girls. Emma, the younger girl, didn’t seem to be able to do it. The effects of her spells came out with such little force that she might as well have been casting lesser words. 

She complained about that, but Simon dismissed it. “These skills take time, and right now, we do not have time for more practice,” he said, relying on her older sister to do the work, which was a problem. 

He’d anticipated both girls breaking free fairly easily, but with Ara having to sever both of their chains and then handle the door, she was practically used up by the time she succeeded in lifting the bar, and Simon had to give her the words of lesser healing just to fix her throat. 

“Can you see the auras around people?” Simon asked her as she took a moment to rest and recover. It was only a suspicion, and truthfully, he should have waited until later to ask the question, but there might not be a later. 

“I—” she said, catching herself as she gave him a look of surprise that told him all he needed to know. “Mother said to ignore them and never mention them to anyone.”

Simon nodded and dropped the subject, wondering whether that was enough to explain the difference between the two girls’ levels of ability. She wasn’t ready for this, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t either. When they finally opened the door, he could barely stagger through it. He wasn’t a person or a warrior, he was a dried-up, desiccated corpse that had a bit more control over itself than a zombie. 

Than a zombie, huh? He wondered as his mind flashed over the differences in the two terrible forms of undeath as a spectrum more than anything else.

He dismissed it, though. As interesting as it was, he couldn’t afford to let himself get distracted by that any more than he could by the neatly sliced piece of wood that had barred his door until recently. It was even protruding from the bracket at the right angle. If he fell just right, he could end his life like that. 

Then the girls wouldn’t get away, though, he reminded himself. First, they would get free, then the sun would get him, and everything would be fine. 

They moved through the darkness quickly and quietly, determined to escape without raising an alarm or doing more fighting than they had to. That was a fine plan until they found the first guard, or more accurately, he found them. When that happened, everyone froze, uncertain of what to do. That was the moment that Ara should have taken off the man’s head with a word of force, but she didn’t. She didn’t have that killing instinct. 

Instead, Simon shuddered to life, moving forward in an attempt to disarm the guard as he drew his short sword. It wasn’t Simon’s preferred weapon, but it made more sense for the tight corridors of this area. That was doubly true when the man impaled Simon on it without too much difficulty. 

He gasped in pain as the blade went right through where his liver and stomach were. It would be a mortal wound for anyone else, but he’d probably be fine in a few minutes. Still, he resisted the urge to scream, and instead, he rasped, “Ara! Finish him.”

One look at the girl told him that she couldn’t, though. She didn’t have a killing blow in her body and stepped back as she mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

Simon was at a loss for what to do then, so he gave in to his darker impulses. He had no choice. Rather than let this asshole push him to the ground and go after the girls or raise the alarm, Simon finally barred his fangs and embedded them into the neck of the man. 

He told himself it was to save the girls or that it was to stifle his scream. Simon told himself a lot at that moment, but he knew it was a lie. The truth was that he was so hungry that he could no longer stand it. He’d been almost out of resistance before Freya had chained Emma and Ara up in his room, and the last two days, he’d resisted out of spite as much as anything else. He simply could not let her win. 

So he drank deeply and felt a thrill go through him that was more powerful than any he’d known before. Not even drinking the swarm of vampiric locusts was as intoxicating as drinking this man’s lifeblood directly from its source. 

The man struggled for a brief moment, but there was no way he could dislodge Simon. He might be dead weight, but he was firmly attached now, and the man lacked the strength to tear out his own throat to dislodge him. He fell to the ground a few seconds later, but Simon still didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. All excuses were gone now. He needed this, and when he finally drank the guard dry and looked up at the girls, it was all he could do not to pounce on them as well. 

“I—” he gasped. “Help me take off his armor. I… We’re going to see if we can’t bluff our way through this.”

Simon was having a lot of trouble holding himself together at that moment. The power of a human life was flowing through him, and for the first moment since Freya had turned him, he felt himself coming alive. His internal organs were expanding, his muscles were swelling, and though he would never again be able to use a mirror to look at his face in the mirror, he was sure he looked only half as haggard as he had moments ago. 

Part of him hated that he’d done it at all, but the rest of him knew it was the only way. He reminded himself of that several times as he donned the dead man’s armor. Then, as he escorted the girls at sword point up and out of the dungeon, he reminded them. “You have magic. Don’t be afraid to use it at the critical moment. It could mean the difference between life and death!”

“One of us has magic,” Emma sighed as they headed up the stairs, but Simon ignored her. 

“A spark of fire or a gust of wind can make all the difference in a fight if used at the right moment,” Simon reiterated. “I’ll do what I can, but we’re running out of time, and if Freya finds us…”

He let that last part linger, as much because there were men nearby when they reached the courtyard as because he couldn’t bear to finish it. If Freya finds us, she could make me turn on you, he thought. It was a dark thought but a likely outcome. She’d let Simon resist for so long only because it was enjoyable for her to drag this out, but with a glance and a few words, she could leave him utterly unable to disobey her. He knew that, and he hated it. 

Still, his disguise worked, and they reached the gate almost without incident. It was there he saw that they still hadn’t repaired the portcullis, which made sense. Even for a good blacksmith, that would be a hell of a job. For now, they just had a few boards nailed across the gap, and with the inhuman strength flowing through him, Simon was sure that he could make short work of those. 

When they reached the gate, though, all of that changed. The guard on duty chuckled and asked, “Where are you taking these beauties off to? Ain't they supposed to be vampire food or something?”

“The Mistress changed her mind,” Simon said, gesturing at the girls as he cringed at how rough his voice still sounded. “He turned his nose up at this feast if you can believe it. She decided to lock him in a coffin for a century and see how he enjoyed starving instead.” 

The guard laughed at that and said, “Well, if they want to come work as maids in her ladyship's service, I’m sure they’ll be very popular with the boys. They…”

His words trailed off as Simon got close enough for the man to get a good look at his face. He wasn’t sure what tipped the man off, but something in his face made the guard shrink back in horror, and he started drawing his sword as he opened his mouth to shout an alarm.

Simon was faster, though. This time, instead of drinking the man’s blood, which he sorely wanted to do, he whipped his short sword out with shocking speed and embedded it in the other man’s throat, leaving it there as he took the guard’s longsword. 

The attack was so sudden and so quiet that no one noticed, but they would soon. He was sure of it. Simon dragged the guard into the gate house’s shadow and then turned to the girls and said, “When I rip the boards off, you walk away like you don’t have a care in the world. Don’t start running until you hear a commotion. I don’t want anyone on watch to think you’re the reason to sound the alarm. I only want them looking at me.”

“But what about—” Ara started to ask. 

“Forget about me,” Simon repeated as he started pulling the boards free. “I’ll be okay, but this is your only chance.”

They wanted to linger and talk, but Simon practically shoved them out the gate. His skin was starting to itch. Dawn was coming, and they had to get away from what was going to happen next. 

You don’t need to fight, his mind told him. You need to die and get the fuck out of here. Simon couldn’t argue with that. 

No matter how much he wanted to take vengeance on Freya, he knew that he shouldn't. She was far more powerful than he was, and via their bond of blood, he felt some perverse sort of loyalty to her. He needed to be ready, though. The alarm would sound, the men would search, and he needed to be that distraction, at least until the last moment. If he was wrong, and they escaped clean, then he could greet the sunrise and be swept away by it. It would be a fitting way to purge his stained soul. 

Simon ignored that cowardly urge to suicide and ran up the stairs to the catwalk, taking them two at a time. Then, he walked to the closest guard he could find up there and devoured him, taking the man completely by surprise, too. Simon didn’t feel as bad about this one. He told himself he needed to be stronger for the fight to come.

That was true, but it was also true that the sensation of devouring his enemy's blood was the single most intoxicating moment of his life, and he craved to do it again like a junkie. This time, the moment wasn’t as intense. He allowed it to linger. He indulged in the darkness of his new nature, practically savoring the terrible moment. He knew that he shouldn't. It would make trying to kick this habit that much harder in the future, but he couldn't help it. It was only when the heart had stopped, and the taste had turned bitter, that Simon stopped and picked up the man's shield.

“Let’s do this,” he told himself. He was overflowing with strength now and as ready as he’d ever be for what was going to happen next.