Death After Death

Chapter 146: Nostalgia

Slany was a town he had a lot of memories of, but encountering it almost out of the blue, even though he knew he was close, felt like something closer to a dream than a reality. Everything looked much the same as the last time he’d left it, but in the half-light of sunset, it seemed that much more magical, and he basked in it. The fact that the little town was still here despite all the strange places he’d been to was a comfort.

There on the hill were the lights of Baron Corwin’s manor, and all the other homes were just as he remembered them. There was no evidence of resurgent goblins or recent strife, either, and Simon smiled at that. Sometimes, it felt like he wasn’t really making a difference, but having seen what this place looked like on the trip where Gregor only had one arm, he knew he’d really moved the needle.

This place very easily could have turned into another Crowvar, he thought to himself.

For a second, he considered whether or not he could go back in time far enough to undo all the damage the Raithewaits caused, but he really couldn’t. While he wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed between level zero and level seven, which is where he spent the most time in the place, he was fairly sure it was a decade or less, and Varten would already be an awful snot-nosed brat by then.

As he walked to the inn and tied Daisy up outside, he laughed at the image. Finally, a version of the man I’d feel bad about killing, he thought to himself.

Simon went inside, still trying to puzzle out the exact timeline involved here, so he reacted a little slowly when the owner and two of the patrons looked at him like they’d seen a ghost. He stood there a moment, trying to decide what the problem was. Old man Wonick had never been able to see his aura before, so that shouldn’t cause a problem now. “Is there a problem?” he asked finally.

“Oh, no, nothing,” the man said, breathing an obvious sigh of relief. “I just thought you was a ghost, is all. Had a good man die recently, and you’re well - you could say that the two of you had more than a passing resemblance.”

“You can say that again,” Norm said. He was one of the regulars who pretty much lived on his bar stool when he wasn’t working the silver mine for the Baron. Simon had spent plenty of nights gambling with him over dice with large beers and small stakes.

“Oh, well, I’m sorry to hear that,” Simon said dumbly as he put the pieces together. “I’m just a peddler traveling south. Nothing more than that.”

“Glad to hear it,” the innkeeper said, slapping the bar with both hands in an effort to seem more lively and shake off his shock. “What can I get you, Mister…”

“Uhhhm, you can call me Jake,” he said, quickly truncating his last name. It wasn’t the most creative decision, but then he was still struggling to take in the news.

I was only days or weeks away from running into myself? Simon was completely stunned.

Still, he ordered a beer and a plate of whatever was hot and made small talk with the other men. His mouth moved, but it was on autopilot while his mind raced. He was on level six now, and the goblin level he usually traveled from was level three, so they had to be at least two or three years apart, right? Had he been here that long? He hadn’t thought so at the time, but he’d been through at least one winter, and then he’d started building his house, so maybe…

While Simon was struggling to put the pieces together, he was jarred off his train of thought when Norm said, “Well, isn’t that a small world! Simon… I mean, the dead man said he was from up north, too. Maybe the two of you really are related.”

Simon tried not to cringe as he realized he’d probably just told the three of them much the same backstory as the other version of himself had years before. “Maybe,” he nodded, “Taking a sip of beer. “Maybe so.”

When they tried to follow up further, Simon gave fake and misleading answers to avoid repeating his mistake. The men at the bar soon lost interest in him, though. Instead, they began to reminisce about the Simon they’d lost so recently. That conversation intensified as others came in and had a similar reaction.

To Simon, the whole situation was very strange. It felt almost like he was sitting in his own wake as the people of Slany talked about all the good he’d done over the years. There was nothing he could do, though. It would have been weird to try to change the topic. So, instead, he just listened to old stories about himself that he only vaguely remembered doing because they’d been such minor things at the time.

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No matter how often they talked about barn raisings or the extra hours that he put in around harvest time, they talked about the goblins more, though. Even mentions of Trinna and how hard the poor girl had taken his passing were less numerous than the greenskins, and the conversation always returned to the silver mines.

“You know, Simon never said anything about it, and I didn’t want to say while the guy was alive because I didn’t want people to be afraid of him,” Norm volunteered finally, “But I was the one that had to drag all those corpses out, and well… let’s just say the man downplayed what he had to do to save Gregor Corwin that day. The man didn’t just put down a couple of goblins and drag the kid to safety. There were a lot more dead down there than all that.”

“You’re painting Simon as a killer!” one of the newcomers said. He was a farmer that Simon remembered, but not so well that he remembered the man’s name. “I find that difficult to believe. The man was a gentle soul.”

“He was,” Norm agreed, “But he had to be a mercenary or worse when he was up north. No one gets that good at killing goblins in a day. Remember, he didn’t even have a scratch on him when he came back to town with Gregor and that coward in tow.”

Simon smiled and laughed where appropriate, but when he finally paid the innkeeper for a room and went upstairs for the night, his mind was spinning from more than just the booze, and he had trouble falling asleep. He felt kind of bad that he’d abandoned everyone so unexpectedly, but it wasn’t exactly his fault. The mule’s kick had hardly been planned.

The real surprise was that he’d almost recovered. In his mind, it had been lights out, and he’d woken up back in the cabin. Apparently, in the real world, things were quite so clean. What had actually happened was that he’d had a skull fracture or worse and lay in a coma for several weeks before he’d finally succumbed. It was an ugly way to go, and he was glad he didn’t remember it.

Really, I should have timed my arrival better. I could have picked up right where I left off, he thought with a smile.

It was fun to think about, but that, of course, was impossible. He might love Slany, but he no longer remembered it the way he once had. Even Trina, who he’d briefly considered asking to marry him, was nothing but a distant memory. He might remember her as a pretty baker, but there was no emotion there anymore, let alone love. The most he could summon when he thought about her flour-streaked face and pretty white smile was nostalgia or fondness. Too much had happened between here and there.

In the morning, Simon set out early, seeking to avoid any other run-ins. On his way out, he made sure to take the long way around rather than go through the center of the village so that Trinna wouldn’t see him. Along the way, he took advantage of that route to check out the house he’d been building on a hill at the edge of town. No one had yet decided to put a roof on it, which made him a little sad. It had only been a couple weeks since all of this had happened, though, so he hoped when everything blew over, someone would finish it. He’d hate to see all his work go to waste.

Simon left Slany with mixed feelings and continued south, one day at a time. He was surprised to find that those feelings hadn’t cost him any experience points, though. He’d worried the negativity might have, but when he checked his mirror, he was up almost a hundred points day over day, which was more than the average.

Now that he was back on the road, and looking more carefully, this was land he’d definitely traveled through more than once on various errands for Lord Corwin. If he went southeast far enough, he’d eventually reach Crowvar. That was another place he wanted to avoid for a variety of reasons. He already had that area handled pretty much like he wanted it, and killing Varten again, as he would inevitably do, would only screw everything up.

Instead, after asking around at a couple of villages, he found the right track and struck to the southwest, into territory he’d never been in before. It was closer to the coast and, therefore, the mountainous region of Ionia. Near as he could tell, he was perhaps a hundred miles due north of Fia and perhaps a hundred and fifty to the northwest of Ionar.

That still put him several hundred miles to the south-south-east of Schwarzenbruck, of course, but then, the world was a big place, and one journey at a time, it was all coming together in the map he had in his mirror. The play area, as he sometimes thought about it, seemed to be made up of four or five countries, not counting the Aztec ruins. He still had no idea where those were.

The Kingdom of Brin was the most central and was ringed by mountains to the east and west. It was also bounded by water to the north and desert to the south. To its north were the uncreatively named the Northlands, which Simon had only brushed up against in Schwarzenbruck.

To the east of Brin stood the mountainous Charia. That was where he’d encountered the werewolf, the owl bear, and a certain masquerade ball that had gone horribly wrong. Other than Ionia, he was sure he’d been there the least.

To the south of Brin was Montain. Simon was pretty sure that was the country that controlled the deserts, along with almost all the territory up to Abresse. He was less sure about that. Other than Darendelle, he hadn’t spent a lot of time there, but he would probably have to.

Finally, to the west was his current goal, Ionia. It seemed much smaller than its neighbors and climbed the marginal lands of the mountains where they hugged the sea. Given the fate of Ionar, it didn’t seem very important in most of Simon’s adventures to date, and he wondered if that would change.

Apparently, in the past, the large trading city of Abresse had been part of Montain but currently styled itself as an independent city-state. That was why Simon wasn’t sure if the entire world map he was building consisted of four countries or five.

Individually, each location was confusing, but very slowly, he was building them into a web in his head that was actually starting to make sense. That, as much as anything, was enough to put a spring in his step as he started the uphill portion of his journey. No matter how exhausting it might be, he was getting close to his destination.