Death After Death

Chapter 25: A Ruined Life

Simon’s first thought was to panic, but his second thought was to do it quietly. He didn’t know what his situation was, or how much worse it would be if he screamed, so instead he flexed and shifted to gauge the strength of his bonds and looked around.

Nothing he found made the situation any better. Not only was he tied up so tightly that it was hard to breathe, but he seemed to be being dragged slowly in the direction of his feet. He also couldn’t see who had done this to him, but with the tropical theme he was thinking it had to be lizard men.

He was starting to give up hope, when he remembered the dagger. He’d held onto it while he slept, and even now it was clutched against his chest.

Working it free without stabbing himself was another problem, but at least it was a problem he could try to solve. It took almost two minutes to get the blade exposed, and even when he started sawing, he wasn’t able to apply much leverage.

His only hope was that he would at least be able to cut through the thing without anyone noticing, and for half a minute he made some progress, cutting first through one vine as thick as his thumb, and then another. Those cuts had made all the difference in the world, and he actually had enough room to work now. He was sure he’d cut himself free in another half a minute.

Then he heard something roar. It was a strange wheezing thing that sounded like a particularly ill Tyrannosaurus Rex. Simon drew a complete blank as to what could possibly make a noise like that, in or out of a video game, but one thing was for sure. He’d been noticed. At that point he gave up all pretense at trying to be subtle and started cutting as fast as he could.

His hand shook with adrenalin as he worked his way through one vine, and then another, and another. It confused him that nothing had come to stomp him or skewer him yet, but he wasn’t about to let that gift go to waste. The only thing that had happened is that they had started dragging him slightly faster. He had no idea what that meant.

Perhaps they were Lilliputians, or pygmies, and they only stood a chance against him as long as he remained bound. He smiled at that thought. Did that mean that he was in a desperate race to get free before they could drag him off a cliff or sacrifice him to their volcano god, he wondered, as he cut the last few vines off of him and was able to crawl free.

What he saw terrified him.

He wasn’t being dragged towards a cook pot or a volcano caldera by a couple of burly lizard men or a tribe of angry pygmies. He was being dragged by the vines themselves towards the waiting maw of a giant toothy blossom. It stood almost twelve feet tall, and the magenta and orange swirls of its leathery petals blended in with the bloody sunset to create a scene that was not of this world.

Simon stepped back as it roared and quaked in rage at being denied its meal. To think - he’d been only minutes away from being eaten alive by a plant, recovering a bit from how shaken he was a moment ago now that he realized that the thing was hardly a threat to him.

“I’ll bet you’re pretty hungry,” he taunted, “Too bad for that you never invented opposable thumbs. Sorry, I meant to say grew. Without those, you’ll always be— ”

He was interrupted by the whistle, as it shot the first thorn at him.

“What the fuck?” Simon shouted, surprised by the sudden turn of events. The creature missed, but it was enough to send Simon running for his life as another volley sprayed the surrounding air. He had no idea what sort of poison was in those darts, and he didn’t want to know because it wasn’t going to be anything good.

Simon started running, and even without his boots, he didn’t stop until he got back to the river. There didn’t seem to be any of the dart launching plants this far from the main body of the nightmare plant he’d just escaped. In the fading twilight, he put his still damp armor and boots on. And pulled out his shield and sword. He hoped that the leather would provide him with some resistance to unexpected attacks, but he wasn’t betting on it.

He had to hand it to Helades. He didn’t see this one coming. A few hours ago this place was a tropical paradise, and now it was a dark nightmare jungle where even the plants wanted him dead.

“You win this round,” he said under his breath, “but I’m not dead yet.” He wasn’t dead, but he had no doubt that he soon would be. He didn’t dare leave the ruins where the stones offered at least some protection from the plants, but he had no idea where he should go within them.

He decided that he needed to get to slightly higher ground to figure that part out. Even without much light left, he could still try to get some idea of how this city had been laid out to see if anything obvious stood out, or if there was some place he could spend the night holed up in relative safety.

A short climb later, he was on top of what had once been a two-story building and looking across the city. From there, the answer was pretty obvious. He hadn’t seen it earlier in the daylight, but at the top of the tallest ziggurat was a faintly yellow light coming from the door at its apex.

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“That might mean there’s something to fight up there,” he said to himself. “I’d still rather die to whatever witch doctor rules over this ghost town than be eaten by a fucking plant, though.”

Simon picked his way down the rubble and started heading towards the pyramid, making sure to take the long way around the flower that had tried to eat him earlier. It struck him that all this was veganism gone horribly wrong, but then he realized that joke didn’t make sense because the plant actually ate meat. He spent most of the walk trying to turn it around into something funny, but eventually gave up in disgust when he reached the bottom of the ziggurat and looked up the hundreds of stairs he was going to have to climb to get where he was going.

If he hadn’t already hated that bitch of a goddess, this would be enough to make him start, he thought to himself as he started hiking his way to the top.

At first, he took a break every twenty steps, but after a few rounds of that he found himself taking a break after ten steps. That wasn’t because he couldn’t do more, he told himself. He just needed to make sure he didn’t get too tired in case some of the surrounding vines tried to attack him again.

They didn’t though. They just laid there, clinging to the stones just like vines should. Even that was enough to make him nervous though as he thought about his grisly brush with death. It took twelve rest breaks to reach the top of the pyramid, and as beautiful as the stars were above the jungle, Simon wished he’d done this during the day. From this high up, he could have gotten a much better idea of where he was.

It’s not like there wasn’t going to be a next time, though, as he stood to make the final ascent.

Despite the fact that Simon entered the chamber at the Apex ready for anything, there was nothing for him to fight. The top of the pyramid, which was pretty much the most obvious place for a boss fight ever, was empty. All he found was the doorway that light spilled out of from a sunlit mountain scene that obviously lead to the next level. Simon thought that was ironic as soon as he saw it. He’d just hiked up an artificial mountain, and now he needed to climb down an actual one.

“Is this a dungeon or a work-out routine, Helades,” he said sarcastically. “Make up your mind.” Still, after his last taste of altitude on the goblin level, he wasn’t looking forward to another hike, even if it was downhill.

Simon stood there for a long moment, looking at the scene like it was a TV and trying to figure out where he was supposed to go to next. It was a sunny day, and the mountainside alternated with scree covered slopes and patchy chunks of snow that were so old they’d turned to ice. That meant that it was in the spring or summer, but still pretty cold. It definitely wasn’t a place he would want to spend the night, which was a problem, because the only thing that seemed worth exploring was a rocky outcropping separated from the door by a ridgeline. Other than that, it was just long slopes that lead down into high valleys.

Eventually, he stepped out of the door and started to walk, towards the outcropping. The only thing that broke the perfect silence was his breathing and the sound of his boots crunching in the snow, so he didn’t immediately pull out his sword. He just walked along, casually looking to the left and the right for some idea of what he was supposed to be doing.

He quickly gave that up and focused on what was right in front of him, though, because the drops were perilous enough to make him queasy. He even put off celebrating his success on getting to level nine because of how risky he thought walking across this slope was. Death by falling down a mountain would have been slightly more embarrassing than the time he fell down the stairs, and far more terrifying. He definitely wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction on that one. His streak was already three levels, but these open world ones seemed easier than the dungeons, so maybe shooting for number four was within his reach.

He didn’t fall and quickly reached the rust-colored granite outcropping he wanted to investigate. There wasn’t much there at first glance. There were no ruins or towers, or even anything to fight. As he climbed a little higher, though, he changed his mind. Near the top, in the sheltered lee of the crumbling peak, he found a nest that was much too big for any bird he’d ever heard of, and his stomach instantly sank. He’d wondered what was going to try to kill him this level, and the answer was obvious now: Griffons.

He started to back away as soon as he saw the eggs that were bigger than his head. “The last thing I want is to be anywhere near those when Mama gets back,” he said to himself.

No sooner were those words out of his mouth than a hideous shriek shattered the stillness and echoed across the peaks. Simon looked up just in time to see something big and scaly fly over him, as he pulled out his sword. For a second he thought it was a dragon, or at least a drake. It was only when it was well past him, and he saw the large bulge at the tip of its tail, that he made a different sort of determination.

The thing that wanted to tear him limb from limb was a wyvern.

Simon turned and started to climb down from the rocky peak as fast as he could, but waited for it to swoop past him again before he took off at a run across the ridge he’d just so carefully hiked across moments ago.

Running on an old snowpack that could give way might kill him, but being caught out in the open by a twenty-foot-long flying lizard would definitely kill him, and he wasn’t about to stand there and try his luck against the thing.

For a second he thought about running back to the ziggurat until the wyvern lost interest, but he could see now that the archway that had been a door a few minutes ago, was now just a few pieces of decorative stonework that framed an empty sky. For the moment, he didn’t worry about his destination. The only destination that mattered was away.

Away didn’t seem to matter much as the giant reptile wheeled around in the sky and came swooping down for another pass, screeching bloody murder the whole time. Simon spared a few glances over his shoulder as the thing got closer to try to judge the timing.

At the very last second, when he could practically feel the thing's hot, angry breath on his neck, he finally dove forward into the snow. He felt the wyvern’s claws graze his armor, but no pain followed that terrible moment, and it was soon past him.

“Holy shit,” Simon exclaimed as he pulled himself to his feet. He was shocked that hadn’t grabbed him and yanked him into the sky, but he knew that he had less than a minute until it came around to try again, and if history was any guide, his luck wasn’t going to hold out much longer.