Death After Death

Chapter 113: Into the Fire

When he’d heard Festuvian try and fail to set off the magical equivalent of a fuel-air bomb, Simon had thought that it was dumb, but deep down, he knew he’d have to use it someday; he just didn’t expect it to be so soon.

He knew that it would be hard on him, even at full strength, but truthfully, he’d been entirely unprepared. Using greater twice in a row had filled him with such tension that he was barely able to get the familiar word of fire out of his mouth. It was a force of will to do so, and he felt like every syllable cost him.

He wouldn’t know how much for a while yet, though. Not until the spell ran his course. Instead, he collapsed there as he imagined a fiery nova rippling outward away from him to burn away the dark.

That’s exactly what happened, fire tore through the darkness turning night into day, and burning away the massed wall of spirits that had been chasing him like the vengeful hand of god. They evaporated in an instant, with no more than silent screams to mark their passing.

For a moment, the world was awash in heat and light, and to Simon, it felt like the end of the world. To him, it might be, he realized. Even as he watched the magic he’d unleashed echo outwards, igniting grass of fire and knocking over tombstones, his consciousness began to fade.

Simon tried to force himself to stay awake, but he couldn’t even make himself stand and slipped off into the blissful embrace of unconsciousness.

Simon had expected to never wake up at all or perhaps to wake up back in his cabin. Instead, he woke sometime later, laying there at the center of a crater that he’d made while the stars still twinkled in the sky above him.

The graveyard was a mess, but he couldn’t do much more than turn his head. Even reaching for his sword was exhausting, and for several long minutes, he lay there simply gauging his pain and exhaustion.

It took much longer than it should to wonder where the fog had gone. “That can’t be it,” he croaked, regretting it instantly.

Simon spent the next half minute coughing up a lung, and when he moved his hand from his mouth he saw fresh blood. It wasn’t a good sign.

While he lay there, he wondered just how many years he’d used in that little blast. If a greater word uses a year, it’s unlikely that two greater words use just two, though, he thought to himself. It might even be ten. Blowing a decade on a spell seemed kind of insane to him, but he wouldn’t put it past Helades. Not when he felt this bad.

With some effort, Simon rolled onto his back and looked up at the stars in the sky as they began to fade. The idea that he’d solved the level with a single explosion seemed unlikely, but the fact that he wasn’t being torn apart made it seem possible.

If it had been so easy, though, then why hadn’t the townspeople done it ages ago? A few bonfires would have been more than enough to erode them to nothing, wouldn’t it?

Simon stayed at the Blind Owl long enough to eat all of their dishes, and to grow tired of most of them before he looked for work. He’d burned years of his life, but laying in bed indefinitely and getting drunk every other night at the bar wouldn’t fix that. Especially not after he heard the rumor that the fog in the graveyard had returned.

Two weeks after his stay, he’d heard about the curse being lifted, but it had taken him some time to put the facts together. Apparently, the graveyard was cursed and had been unsafe to enter by night for decades. Simon had solved that problem, but only for a month or so. Then they’d found a widow stone cold not far from the grave of her husband. She’d stayed there after dark and apparently paid the price for it.

That was what finally got his ass into gear as he started to move among the people of the city and learn what the hell was going on. He tried and failed to gain employment as a caravan guard and even a mercenary for the city watch. He couldn’t fault them, he supposed. He did have a bit of an evil look about him right now.

It wasn’t until he was returning to the inn one night after attempting to gather clues about the cemetery’s history that all that changed. Two muggers suddenly flanked him on a narrow side street and gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse at knifepoint. “What’s it going to be, man, your coin purse or your life?”

Simon considered drawing his blade, but he didn’t like his odds against both of them. He was probably good for a normal word of power, but he didn’t really want to cause a commotion that would force him to leave this city, not when he was making progress in understanding the nature of the mist and the curse of Darndelle.

So instead, he moved to hand the first man a heavy purse with a shaking hand, but as the rogue reached for it and grinned, Simon dropped it and whispered, “Gervuul Zyvon,” as he grabbed the man’s hand.

A greater word was a bad idea. He knew that, still, there was no resistance or hesitation, and it flowed effortlessly from his lips even as the face of the other man went pale. For a moment, Simon could feel pieces of the other man’s life flowing into his own. He could feel his hunger and his desperation. More than that, though, he could feel the mugger’s youth and vitality flowing in to him.

In that moment, Simon felt strong for the first time in over a month, and even as the other man fell backward and scrambled to get away, Simon turned to face his friend. The man lunged at Simon with his dagger, but now that he no longer felt like he was in the body of a geriatric old man, Simon had no trouble gripping his wrist and twisting it hard enough to break the thief’s arm before using the leverage to swing the man face-first into the brick wall.

The would-be mugger went limp from the force of the blow and left a bloody smear on the bricks. Simon wasn’t sure if he was dead, but he didn’t really care. He just gloried in being able to move again before he stooped to pick up the dagger that the man had dropped as he turned to face the first man again.

He was already staggering away from Simon, of course, and normally, Simon would have been willing to let him go, but he couldn’t help but notice that the man had scooped up Simon’s coin purse before making himself scarce. That was enough for him to throw the dagger, making it spin end over end into the other man’s thigh, sending him tumbling to the ground.

“Please, mercy,” the man said, rolling over and tossing Simon the purse.

He looked down at it, hefted it for weight, and then stepped over the man and continued on his way. By the time he reached the main street, a tune had sprung to his lips, and he was whistling merrily away. He didn’t need to take the thief’s life; sepsis would do that fine all on its own.