Death After Death

Chapter 112: Out of the Frying Pan

Simon had seen a number of different levels on the other side of this portal, but the graveyard concerned him more than the golem or the ghosts. “Well, they’re both ghosts,” he said to himself, clarifying.

“Who are,” the devil asked, looking up from his writing to study Simon.

Simon ignored that, though, and continued to think about the whole thing. They were both ghosts, but they behaved very differently. Did that mean that they were the same kind of ghost? Were there even different kinds of ghosts. He’d heard of poltergeists, of course. He’d even seen one of the movies a long time ago, but he wasn’t much of a horror fan.

Right now, though, he kind of wished he was. He was certain that would have been helpful for some of the weirder levels like this one. He didn’t know what the mist creature was or if it had weaknesses beyond light and fire. He just knew that if he used magic to create those, it would backfire.

“But how am I going to create light or fire without…oh.” As Simon thought that through, he realized he was being an idiot. There were lots of ways to create fire that didn’t involve having to use a spell, and he grew annoyed at his ever-increasing dependency on a handful of magic words.

There’s at least one level where that’s not happening, and probably more beyond that, so I need to learn to do without, he thought to himself as he looked at the wooden furniture in the room.

Sadly, he’d lost his axe somewhere along the way, he realized as he went to retrieve it. That had almost certainly been the sewer, but there was nothing he could do about it now, so he unsheathed his sword instead.

“Oh, are you finally ready to fight?” the devil asked, unsheathing a scintillating rapier. “Name your stakes, and we’ll go a round or two.”

Simon looked at the preening fob and rolled his eyes before he started hacking up the nearest pew with his sword. He didn’t need magic fireballs; he just needed a source of firewood, and sacrilegious or not, this would do just fine.

He spent the next twenty minutes breaking chairs and benches and then very carefully carrying them over to the edge of the portal and dumping them through the other side. One his second trip he even heard it sound midnight, which seemed strange, because it had done so right after he’d entered last time. Still even though he waited for it, the mist did not appear.

“Huh,” he said to himself as he stepped over the shattered floor to get another load of broken furniture. “I guess there’s more to it than that.”

“You’re not the first person to say that,” the devil agreed. “Not that your dreary little graveyard is a place I’ve seen often, mind you.”

“Oh?” Simon asked, finally responding to the thing. “I suppose this is where you offer to tell me how to defeat this level for a price?”

The devil laughed at that for several seconds before finally sheathing his sword. “Why would I think you need any help with this one. The few of you that have gotten so far tend to make short work of it.”

“Is that so,” Simon asked as he picked up more wood and started walking back to the portal. Sure, this thing was trying to make him overconfident or distract him. It wouldn’t work, though, and he focused on his feet as he went.

“What? It’s true,” the devil insisted. “I’ve talked to other heroes in other pits about some of the levels that frustrated them to no end, and ghosts made the list, of course, along with castles, dragons, armies, and mazes, but these spirits… well, I’ve said enough already.”

Simon looked at the devil, trying to figure out what his game was. It was there he made an almost fatal mistake. As he turned, a broken chair leg fell from the pile he was carrying and clattered to the stone floor. That by itself wouldn't have been a problem, but when it bounced off of one of the chalk outlines, the thing snapped like it was a physical thing under tension.

“Oh, look what you’ve done now,” the devil said with a smile as the circle began to uncoil and unravel like a spring under tension. “I think we’d best agree to terms in the next few seconds before…”

Simon ignored the voice and charged toward the portal even as the demon paced at the edge of his collapsing cell like a hungry tiger. He’d meant to grab a lantern to light the fire he was planning, but he was out of time now. He’d much rather use a word of fire instead of getting sucked into hell, which was what he imagined was about to happen to everyone.

As soon as his feet touched the grave earth, he dumped his wood and drew his sword as he whirled around. Even as he did so, he could see the mist starting to seep up from the ground around him. As concerning as that was, though, he ignored it for a moment as he focused all of his attention of the portal he’d just left behind.

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The thing was set into the doorway of a mausoleum, and part of him desperately wanted to slam the door shut, but another part was almost hypnotized by the way the runes caught fire and unwound, sending up showers of sparks as they failed and burst into flames.

It was like the whole thing was a fuse leading to a pile of dynamite, but even as he feared the explosion, it would let loose. He couldn’t help but watch as the floor fell away and the gateway to hell grew wider and wider.

“I’ll see you next time,” the devil yelled across the widening gap.

Simon had half a second to wonder about that, and then the portal flicked and vanished. “The doorway it was sitting in must have collapsed,” Simon mumbled to himself as his heart raced and he tried to piece together what had happened. He’d never thought of the portals as being a sort of physical object, but then he’d never tried to destroy one, either. “Thank fucking—-Aghhh”

As he tried to parse everything that was happening, his left leg suddenly went cold, and when he looked down he could see why, three different foggy hands were wrapped around it, and more were reaching him. It was clear that last time he’d been wrong that time was the key factor, clearly it was time and fresh meat, and these things were hungry for him.

“Barom!” he yelled, instantly sheathing himself in white light as he fell to one knee.

The mist dissipated instantly, but it began to gather more quickly around him at the edge of his aura, a few feet away. The light wasn’t waning yet, but he knew from experience that it would be soon, and with a numb leg, running through the graveyard would be impossible. So instead, he turned to his scattered pile of firewood and started staking it back up before he whispered, “Aufvarum Meiren,” and lit one of the smaller pieces of kindling with a minor word of fire.

Even as his own light waned over the next few minutes, the light of the fire grew, and that seemed to be enough to keep it at bay. That was good because he still only had a little feeling in his left leg, and he knew he wasn’t getting out of there soon.

The longer it persisted, and the thicker it got, the more the fog began to take characteristics that would be impossible for normal weather. Dozens of faces and hundreds of hands boiled up out of the mist before melting back a way to make room for another tide of disjointed limbs and tortured expressions. It might have been beautiful if it wasn’t so terrifying.

Every single one of those things wanted to suck the life out of him, and if his fire went out, he was probably screwed. As time wore on, he noticed that it seemed to be able to affect even the fire he’d built. With the three armfuls of wood he had stacked there, it should have burned like a bonfire. Instead, it was a guttering campfire that seemed ready to go out at almost any moment.

Somehow, this thing craved light and life and drank it in. It wasn’t the magic he’d used before at all. It was just an endless tide of darkness that seemed to be annihilating the light.

“What am I supposed to do about that,” Simon wondered aloud, but he didn’t have any answers. This was definitely a level he needed to be careful of, though, no matter what the demon on the last floor had said. He could very easily see things ending badly for him if he let this thing devour his life and suck out his soul.

Would he definitely end up as another tortured spirit left behind in the mist with the rest of these poor bastards? No, but the very idea that he might, terrified him. What could he do if his fire went out? He could run for it again now that his leg felt like it was reattached to the rest of him, but that wouldn’t solve the level, and…

Even as he ran through his options, the light continued to shrink as the angry wraiths circled him like the storm wall of a powerful hurricane. The mass of hungry spirits was a wall that towered above him in the dark, and each of them drank a mote, and there were hundreds now, or thousands, maybe, just waiting to devour him.

Part of him wondered how the rest of the city that obviously surrounded him dealt with this, or really, why they weren’t noticing it right now, but he couldn’t give that too much thought because his fire was guttering now, and the swirling darkness was closing in.

Simon drew his sword and shouted “Barom!” again, making his sword glow bright enough that one might confuse it with a sci-fi laser sword, but a wall of darkness drank it in greedily even before he thrust the thing in.

Still, it bought a little time, and the fire sprang to life once more for a few more minutes. The wood was ready to burn. It was only the dread magic that these things were using to leach it away that soaked it in and prevented it.

The one thing that his spell didn’t do, though, was open a path through. Before, he’d managed to stay just ahead of the worst of it, but now he felt like he was surrounded.

No, he didn’t feel like it. He was surrounded. He tried a word of light one more time when the flames started to get low again, but it worked no better than the first. So, after that, he switched to a word of greater light.

“Gervuul Barom!” he yelled, sending out the illumination in a beam that cleared the path for a long way. The greater word of power flared to life, burning its way out of his throat leaving him with the taste of ashes in his mouth.

The wound in the darkness started to stitch shut immediately, but Simon didn’t care. He was already running with a slight limp. By the time the way closed, he was already on the other side and jogging awkwardly toward the gate.

He wasn’t going to make it though. Not this time. He was slower than last time. He was out of shape, and he was exhausted. Even after his ill-advised nap in the demon’s chapel, he had nothing left. So he stopped, and decided to try his last trump card. The safe thing to do would be to use a word of greater fire on himself right now and start over, but he didn’t do that.

Why would he? He was tired of giving up. Instead he shouted “Gervuul Gervuul Meiren!”