Death After Death

Chapter 24: A Rat in a Maze

Simon lit his torch from the dying embers in the hearth and gazed into the rancid tunnel. The magic of the doors superimposing themselves into a place they should not be still hadn’t quite worn off for Simon, though the disgusting odor certainly had.

“This place is almost as bad as the goblins,” he complained to no one in particular.

Even breathing through his mouth, he had to fight off the urge to gag. This was one detail that had been left out of every fantasy novel and game he’d ever played: the past was gross, and the monsters that populated it were even grosser.

When he got out of this and was iseakied into a more appropriate fantasy world, he was definitely choosing anosmia for his character now that he knew what an OP advantage the lack of smell really was.

In the meantime, though, he didn’t let that stop him from seeing where this tunnel went. It turned out not to be very interesting. It was just a dismal tube that was eight or ten feet around and had a small footpath that was about a foot and a half wide on either side of the foul river that flowed between them.

The side passages that occasionally crossed were only half as wide, and Simon had very little interest in crawling down one of them unless he was forced to. This was already disgusting enough.

After ten minutes of uninterrupted boredom, Simon found himself yawning. If this place didn’t reek of shit, his immediate priority would be finding somewhere safe to take a nice long nap. The fighting hadn’t been any more strenuous than usual, but that fire spell had really taken it out of him for some reason. He wished for the millionth time that there was some kind of guide written for how this world’s broken-ass magic system actually worked because guessing was really taking a toll.

At least there was nothing that was bent on attacking him, he thought hopefully, until he remembered that the goblin level started off that way too. So far, he’d just seen a few sewer rats that had run away from him as soon as he’d gotten too close. The biggest hazard had been the trickles of filth that occasionally sprayed out of the small pipes that joined this one from the wall and the ceiling now and then.

It certainly seemed more dungeon-like than some of the other levels, but it would need monsters to complete the look. A giant crocodile seemed the most cliché choice, but he could see rat men or lizard people down here, too, so he stayed focused, looking for anything that didn’t belong. Things that didn’t belong showed up pretty quickly after that in the form of a corpse floating in the sewage. It was actually dead, though, and the only thing it did to Simon was to practically give him a heart attack, so he continued on. Around the curve, though, he saw that the tunnel ended in a large grate, and major passages went off to the left and right, forming a T-junction.

Even from this distance, he could see some light shining around the corner from the left-hand side, so he guessed that was the way out, but right now, he couldn’t make himself care about it. Not when there was a pile of bodies so tall it obscured most of the grate and practically blocked the flow of the fetid sewer water.

Simon pulled out his sword. Even though there wasn’t an enemy in sight yet. He didn’t need to see what was out there when he could clearly see their handiwork. He slowly picked his way along the wall, mindful of his footing, and focused on the inevitable ambush to come. At the same time, he tried to think of what might be invisible enough to hide in plain sight like this.

He drew a blank, but thinking about it was still better than focusing on the decaying dead around him. These were not the victims of the same fight. They didn’t die the same way or at the same time. He supposed that the currents of the sewer could have led them here from wherever they had been killed, but that seemed too easy an answer. His paranoia was rewarded when the largest pile by the grate began to stir.

“Zombies? Down here?” he asked himself, feeling an irrational jolt of fear slide down his spine. What burst out of the pile wasn’t human at all. It was some worm thing half as big as a man and full of tentacles. It was disgusting but looked a bit like something he’d seen in a couple RPGs he’d played over the years. A carrion crawler. He only remembered it because of the gross name and grosser appearance, and right now, there was one staring him down from two dozen feet away.

The thing reared up at him and hissed. Simon countered by throwing his torch at it. With the light around the corner, he had enough light to see, and he had a pretty good shot at this thing being weak to fire since it was an underground carrion eater.

The creature dodged his throw by skittering up the grate and onto the ceiling. Simon had just a second to wonder how the hell it was keeping itself up there when it suddenly charged him. Simon was ready for that, though. He’d freed up his left hand, so he could use his shield better, and he raised his sword to strike as soon as it got within range.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It didn’t, though. The slimy four-foot-long worm-centipede thing just held itself there over the churning sewage while it regarded him, still several feet out of reach. It wasn’t until Simon tried to edge past it that the thing’s tentacles lashed out at him.

Simon lifted his shield, blocking most of them before swinging his sword down at the slimy appendages. Several were severed by the blow, and Simon smiled in triumph even as the creature screamed and hissed, slowly backing away. He felt the burning numbness spreading through his left arm only after that moment passed. At first, it felt like Novocaine, but seconds later, he was losing feeling in his fingers and having trouble keeping his arm up.

Paralysis. That certainly scared the crap out of him as he realized what was happening. He’d already had some awful deaths, but watching this thing nibble on him for a day or two while he was alive but powerless to move would rank way up there for the worst death.

Several thoughts flashed through his mind in a single moment. Should he try to light this thing on fire? Should he try to cast his healing spell? Did it even work on poison?

Ultimately, he decided that fighting was no longer an option, and he had to escape. So, he swung wildly, over and over, to keep the thing back as he carefully tried to get around it and towards the light while his left arm became ever more useless. Cut once by his sword, the creature had no real interest in getting close enough for that to happen again.

Simon was able to skirt around it and then back down the left passage. He slipped once on someone’s guts, which had been splayed across the narrow ledge he walked, but he was able to grab the ladder with his right hand as he slipped to avoid taking a bath. As it was, he went in with his right leg up to his knee.

It was disgusting, he thought as he fought the urge to wretch, but it was still better than being eaten alive by that thing. Simon swore that he would shoot it with the crossbow the next time he was here, before it had a chance to get close, not that that would help him this time.

Right now, the sunlight pouring down from above him seemed to be doing a good job of keeping the thing away, but he had no way of knowing if that would hold once he started the ladder since he would have to do that one-handed and would be completely defenseless while he did so. Once he was far enough away from the disgusting monster’s even more disgusting pile of corpses, though, it backed off, surprisingly. When Simon realized it had attacked him because it thought he was going to steal its dinner, he laughed out loud. He couldn’t help it. This made the creature hiss at him again, but it only retreated further into its mound of death. Simon shrugged. If the thing was going to let him by… well, that suited him just fine.

He sheathed his sword and scampered up the ladder as fast as he could with one arm, which wasn’t terribly fast.

Honestly, by the time he got up and out into the daylight, he was too surprised that that thing hadn’t snuck up behind him and dragged him back down to notice where he was. It took him a moment to notice that this wasn’t the sort of city he would have expected to have a working sewer system and even longer to realize it hadn’t been a city for a long time, not really.

Simon was standing amidst ancient ruins that looked like they were more vine than stone at this point. They hadn’t been home to anyone in a long time. It wasn’t that nature was winning, though. It had won. Rainforest surrounded the ruined walls and crumbling ziggurats, and a river cut through what had once been a main thoroughfare.

“It’s beautiful,” Simon said to himself.

It was better than beautiful, though; it was exactly what he needed. He could just feel hepatitis and cholera trying to invade his body through the sewage-drenched armor, and he could definitely do with a short bath.

Even as he walked down to the river, though, he forced himself to keep his guard up. The waterfall on the fifth floor had been beautiful, too, until the slime had melted his face off.

Here, there didn’t seem to be anything around that could hurt him, though. There was nothing but Incan-style ruins, flowering vines, and the occasional fruit. The fruits looked delicious, but he could give them a try later after he was clean. Even the songbirds weren’t anywhere close to him, and he would hardly count them as a threat.

The numbing poison was still spreading throughout his body, making Simon feel weak, but aside from his left arm, he could still move everything. He’d be able to fight if it came to it, he decided as he slowly removed the buckles and the straps of his greaves and cuisses.

Until he regained the feeling in his arm, getting his cuirass off was out of the question, but that wasn’t nearly as important as cleaning his legs before the gangrene set in. The river was cool but not quite cold, and Simon endured it as he waded into the water. A little bit of suffering was worth it to avoid getting jaundice and whatever else was down there, he told himself.

So he suffered through it and wiped everything down, and 20 minutes later, he was leaning back against the remains of a low stone wall, keeping his eyes out of the sun while his body dried on the warm flagstones that had once been a plaza.

This place was amazing, and Simon wanted to look around it more, but he was exhausted. That damn spell he’d cast earlier had taken it all out of him, and when you added a little fighting on top of that, well - he was beat. He yawned and stretched and then picked up his dagger, determined not to be caught entirely unaware if he did accidentally drift off.

This was probably the longest he’d been alive for one shot since he’d entered The Pit. Well - it certainly had been since Freya, he realized sadly. “That was only two deaths ago,” he whispered to himself as he realized it. The half an eternity he’d spent as a member of the living dead made it seem much longer, but in reality, it was practically yesterday. Somehow that made it more tragic.

Simon tried not to dwell on either of those terrible tragedies and instead focused on the positive. This was almost certainly level eight - which meant that this was his most successful run to date.

“Speed run bitches!” He yelled out, not caring who heard. He listened to the echo of his voice fade before he turned towards the tallest ziggurat and the sun that would start to move behind it within an hour. “I know you can hear that, Helades. Two levels down, 91 to go. I’m coming for you. I understand your games now, and you can’t stop the inevitable.”

Simon drifted off to sleep shortly after that. His dreams were strange and restless, dealing mostly with levels he hadn’t yet conquered, and when he woke up, it was getting close to sunset.

It was only when he tried to stretch that he realized he was engulfed in vines.