When Simon woke up this time, he opened his eyes immediately and looked down at his feet out of habit. He knew they’d be back, of course, but he also knew that the longer he let his eyes stay shut, the more he would think about the horrible image of watching his legs being turned into hamburger by that thorny meat grinder.
It hadn’t been a bad death, he thought to himself. He hadn’t suffered, at least. He hadn’t drowned or suffocated. In a sense, it had been almost peaceful, but peaceful or not, being forced to watch it happen was enough to make him resent the younger version of himself for actually enjoying horror movies.
“Well, we aren’t going back there for a while,” he told himself as he sat up and grabbed for the bottle of wine, gratified to hear his voice worked once more, too.
It would be one thing if he’d found something interesting, like a thread he could follow, to make the suffering worthwhile, but he had no leads there, so he might as well skip it for now, he decided as he stood and downed half the bottle of wine.
“I mean, the main reason to beat that place would be so I don’t have to keep climbing those stairs,” he said with a laugh. It was a joke, though, mostly. He needed the exercise, and walking up and down a step pyramid was a lot nicer than some of the other ways he could spend his time.
“Hey, mirror, can you tell me anything about the jungle level? The one with the plants that just ate me?” Simon asked.
‘I cannot.’ the mirror responded.
“Nothing? Not even a little hint?” Simon asked, trying to wheedle something out of it. “How about what it’s called, or if it’s even on the same continent as all the other places.”
‘But I cannot tell you that all of the levels you have visited are on the same continent,’ it typed.
“But I thought you couldn’t tell me about the other levels?” he said, feeling like he’d caught it in a lie.
‘I cannot,’ it agreed in glowing blue text.
“But you just said—” he sputtered.
‘All I told you was what I cannot tell you,’ it typed infuriatingly.
Simon sighed. “Of course, you fucking can’t. That would be too fucking easy.”
This time, he remembered the axe as he got ready, but he put it back as he tried to figure out how to really move the needle. “I’d bet I killed that troll for good with the fire. The Basilisk, too. What else are some other simple seek-and-destroy type levels I could tackle?”
The first one that came to mind was the wyvern level. It was frightening, but honestly, probably doable as long as he used magic from a distance. After that was what? The volcano? He was pretty sure he couldn’t take that down with the frost sword, but he’d think about it if he survived the wyvern.
Simon worked his way through the initial levels on autopilot as he stayed lost in thought. Now, he was dividing the levels into three categories: those he thought he’d beaten, the ones he thought he knew how to beat, and those that were still a complete mystery.
In the first category, he placed the troll level, the level with the Rivenwood, and the frozen shrine. They were easy enough. It was the last category that bothered him more. What was he supposed to do on the hell level in the cathedral? Presumably, he should shut the gate, but he had a feeling that even the lightest misstep on his part would break it wide open instead, but who knew if that was the right answer.
The same thing went for the haunted castle or mansion or whatever it was. Was he supposed to find someone? Defeat someone? Maybe it was just a rescue mission, like with the kids. He certainly hoped that was the case on the Pompeii level. He couldn’t imagine that Helades meant for him to fight a whole damn volcano, could she?
Nothing new or unusual happened to Simon as he sank ever deeper into the pit. When he reached level seven, he was disappointed to find the sewer was still there. That probably meant that he needed to dig through the pile of corpses at the end and see what that shining thing was that he’d accidentally flushed last time.
He would have done it, too, but as his force spell squashed the corpse crawler like the insect it was, it inadvertently triggered a cave-in as the rotting bricks of the sewer's roof suddenly gave way.
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The second the ceiling started to collapse, he ran for his life. Simon didn’t stop until he reached the ruins, either. It was only then, when he was well away from all the danger of both being crushed to death while drowning in sewage and the paralytic vines that would try to mulch him to death, that he finally able to relax and brainstorm a plan.
The answer turned out to be relatively straightforward, and so, once it was decided, he turned and made the long, slow walk up the giant temple at the center of the city. Once he reached the top, five rest breaks and one water skin later, he took the time to review the surviving pictographs up here since they were something he hadn’t concentrated on too much in the past.
It was mostly creation myth stuff about how the sun and moon were brothers and warred with each other before finally agreeing to share the sky for half the day each. In this culture, darkness was the enemy, and it was symbolized by the jungle growing in until it blocked out all the light so that the evil could sneak in and devour everyone while they hid from the light.
“I guess death by plants is sort of a divine punishment, then,” he laughed as he looked down at the vine-riddled city. The jungle proper still hadn’t eaten it, but Simon doubted it would ever find a way to displace all the stone plazas and megalithic structures. Still, as he looked at the carnivorous plants in the light of sunset, he couldn’t help but think that they looked like a sort of cancer surging through the streets.
He was pretty sure he’d penetrated all the way to the heart of that ugly green knot last time, but he didn’t feel like going down to check just now. He could do that another time when the memories of his most recent death weren’t so visceral.
That was Simon’s last thought before he turned and walked onto the weeks old, crunchy snow of the wyvern’s mountain. There, the nostalgia hit him almost as hard as the cool, crisp air.
Had he been here since… what had happened before? Simon wondered. He realized immediately that he hadn’t. This was the deepest he’d gone since Freya died so tragically. Not that he’d learned anything since then that could have saved her.
For a moment, he wanted to go visit her grave, but he realized immediately that it wouldn’t actually be there, no matter how much he might wish it were. That wouldn’t stop him from going to kill Varten, though, he realized. With a little effort, he could probably pull that rickety tower that loomed over their manse and kill their household.
For a moment, he entertained the idea, taking some dark pleasure in the idea of being the personal curse of the Raithewaits for generation after generation. He dismissed it as he heard the distant screech, and he turned to see the Wyvern wheeling high overhead. It was hunting something besides him, though, so he ignored it and instead looked off into the distance, wondering how far it was to Slany.
“The Baron said that he knew Gregor,” he muttered to himself, “so it can’t be too far away, right? Somewhere to the north, maybe?”
It would take a trip down the mountain to the closest village, but he imagined it wouldn’t be too far. He was seriously considering it since it would be nice to see a familiar face. He let the idea play through his mind as he watched the wyvern dive and come back up with a large elk struggling in its claws.
It was an effortless hunt on the giant lizard’s part. It just swooped down, intercepting its giant prey the way a hawk or an eagle might snatch a hare, and then it was off again. It hadn’t even needed to use that giant stinger like it had tried to on Simon. More than once, actually, now that he thought about it.
Part of him wanted to slice that terrifying wrecking ball of a weapon off with a word of force, but that wasn’t the real weakness of that monstrosity.
He drew his sword, and, sighting down it like it was the sights of a gun, he whispered, “Dnarth Oonbetit.” Distant force. As he spoke, he imagined a long, invisible line streaking from him straight to the wing of the creature. Nothing happened, though. Not at first.
Simon would have bet money that even adding distant to force hadn’t been enough to reach a target that was so far away. If that was the case, though, it wouldn’t have swerved in midair or dropped its dinner as it started to look around for what had happened. The force he’d used must have clearly generated a breeze that the sensitive predator could feel, or else he’d landed a glancing blow.
“Well, missed is better than the alternative,” he said with a shrug, even though he was greatly disappointed that this spell didn’t have some sort of heat-seeking function. Even more than fire, force required very precise imagination since it was literally just a line. It was even smaller than a bullet in that sense, and he was trying to hit a moving target that had to be almost half a mile away.
He tried again and again, undeterred. With a word like this, it didn’t take too much effort, so he had lots of opportunities. He wasn’t worried, but even so, it took four shots as he thought of it to see any real result. It was then when the predator turned toward him and flared its wings to dive bomb a new target, that Simon’s invisible blow finally landed. His spell sliced right through the largest membrane of the creature’s left wing, and then, just like that, it wasn’t flying anymore. It was falling.
With a shriek of alarm, the wyvern began to flounder and then fell out of the sky in an uncontrolled corkscrew flight that went faster and faster as it approached the ground with a wet thwack of meat and bone, meeting rock and snow.
He walked over to it, a few hundred yards away, where its evil green blood started to hiss and boil in the snow, which scratched the idea of trying out a wyvern steak right off the menu.
“Well,” he shrugged, “That was… easier than expected.”
Part of him had expected some epic fight sequence with the weakened creature, and though he wasn’t sure he had the balls to get up close and personal with a wounded wyvern while he was this out of shape, he’d expected he’d have to blast the thing with lighting a couple of times at least, but gravity seemed to have done the work for him.
However, even after it stopped moving, he decided not to go stab it and make sure it really was dead. Even if it was playing possum, there was no way it would ever fly again. That had to be enough, right?
“Well,” he said, sheathing his sword as he gave the corpse a wide berth. “Might as well find that elk and make lunch. Waste not, want not.”