Death After Death

Chapter 28: The Bridge

Simon lashed out with the pike twice as he slowly backed up. The weapon wasn’t just a big spear, though. It was a giant spear. It was heavy enough that the only way he could wield it effectively was to leave the butt of it on the ground behind him.

Both strikes missed the Owlbear as it danced back away from him. It was a bloodthirsty monster, for sure, but it was also more than a little skittish, and didn’t seem nearly as interested in him out and in the open as it had been in the underbrush.

The result of all that, was as Simon backed away to the far side of the road it backed away into the shadows beneath the trees. Simon didn’t feel any safer once the thing had vanished, though. That just made him jumpy.

Now that it vanished, it could be anywhere, and it could spring out at him at any time. Simon stooped to retrieve and sheath his sword, while he still held onto the pike with his other hand. The last thing he wanted to do was walk very far holding this heavy ass piece of junk, but it was better that than getting his throat torn out by that thing’s razor beak, he decided as he lifted the thick shaft of his giant spear and started to walk slowly down the path.

He’d thought about looking through the remains of the wagons. There was probably something he could use in there, but it was dark and rainy, and the last thing he needed to do was dig through the remains of people and animals for a few coins or a new sword.

Especially not with that thing still out there.

As Simon walked, he heard it screech occasionally, and he kept thinking that he was in one of those dinosaur movies where it's not the raptor you were looking at that gets you, but the one that sneaks up on you from behind that rips you to pieces.

There was no evidence of a second monster of that size out here, though, and Simon was pretty sure that it was a solo predator. As long as he kept a hold of his pike and left the road between the two of them, the thing left him alone. Simon would be happy to stab it if it came back out, but there was no way he was going into the woods after it. He had no idea what effect a lone owlbear was going to have on history, but he didn’t really care. His mission wasn’t to fix this alleged hero’s fuck-ups. It was just to get to the end.

Once he did that, he would get his dream incarnation and leave Helades to clean up her own mess.

As the woods tapered off, Simon saw a windmill on a bluff overlooking a river off to his right. He thought about going for it, but the place looked creepy as hell in the storm, and after a particularly theatrical bolt of lightning silhouetted the place, he took it as a sign not to go check it out. He had no doubt that the headless horseman, or something equally awful, was over there waiting for him.

Instead, he kept on the road and walked to the covered bridge. It was almost as creepy, honestly, but it was basically just a hallway, so there was less searching involved.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” Simon said as he stepped inside.

Ten feet in, Simon understood why they didn’t make bridges like this anymore. They were pretty much tailor-made for serial killers and horror movies, but it’s not like he had any other choice right now. Halfway through, when he was worried that maybe he should have taken a right on the main road he’d found instead of a left, he noticed there was a village on the far side. With the weather and the lighting the way it was, he couldn’t say for sure if it had always been there and he hadn’t seen it through the rain, or if he’d just managed to cross another level boundary, but it didn’t matter.

Civilization was civilization, and he would take it. The place looked a little run down, and there wasn’t a light to be seen. It was the middle of the night though, and that could be poverty as much as anything, so he tried not to overreact to that.

Keeping his calm worked pretty well, until he was most of the way through to the far side, and he heard the timbers start to shift and creek. Simon worried that the thing was less stable than it looked and that it all might come crashing down on him, at least until he saw the silhouette appear on the far side. This thing was less bear and more ape, he decided, which made it, what? An orc? Weren’t those supposed to be pig creatures?

“I’m armed,” Simon yelled, swallowing hard to keep his fear down. “Come any closer, and I’ll fuck you up.” The thing might be big, but it wasn’t any bigger than his mega spear. Orcs might be scarier than goblins, but one or two would be manageable. Simon was confident that he could take it out unless the thing had a whole warband to back it up.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

At least, that was the case until it raised itself to its full height, and roared. It was a terrifying sound that could have easily fit into Jurassic Park. At that moment, Simon considered dropping his weapon and running as fast as he could instead. The only reason he didn’t, was that he could tell, from how fast it was moving, he’d never get to the other end of the bridge in time.

The thing indeed had green skin, but at over eight feet tall, it was a bit big for an orc. In Simon’s eyes, that left only one option: a troll. It was a bit of a cliché to use on a bridge, but no one was ever going to accuse Helades of being original and creative.

Not like Simon.

The moment he figured out what he was fighting, he formulated a plan. He braced his spear, and prepared to cast a spell as he imagined the creature lighting into a roaring bonfire that would… it was only just before the monster reached him that Simon realized he couldn’t cast the fire spell in here. He’d catch the troll on fire, and that was their weakness. He remembered that much, but he’d also burn the bridge down while he was still inside.

No, the fireworks had to wait until they were out in the open.

None of Simon’s hesitancy or indecision was mirrored by the horrifying troll that was charging him, though. It just kept barreling forward, as it alternated between terrible gibbering noises that were almost speech, and bloodthirsty howls of hunger. The noises it made were almost as frightening as the noises under the wood beneath its feet, and Simon was worried the whole thing was going to give way before he had the chance to fight his way clear.

When the creature voluntarily impaled itself on Simon’s pike, that didn’t surprise him. He’d expected that much. To a creature that could regenerate as well as a troll, wounds like that were meaningless. He’d braced the butt against the wood to delay the thing. Originally he’d planned to use that delay to melt its face off, but instead he used it to dive under the creature’s grasping hands, pick himself up off the wood and run as fast as he could.

He heard the haft of the weapon break before he’d even reached the end of the bridge. The wood had been almost as thick as his wrist, and Simon had thought that the thing would slow down the brute a little longer than it did. When it was free of the bridge, he spared a glance over his shoulder, but wished that he hadn’t.

Simon’s second plan had been to turn around when he reached the end of the bridge and burn the whole thing down with the troll still inside. There was no way that was happening now, though, because the creature was practically right behind him. His head would be ripped off before he had the chance to say the two words that might save his life.

So he did what he did best: he ran. Simon sprinted in a zigzag path across the town square, screaming for help.

“There’s a troll!” he yelled. “Someone! Anyone!”

No one stirred, and no help made itself known. To all appearances, the town had been entirely deserted. He was all on his own, just like always. Which was fine with him. Help would have been better, but a quick mind like his was probably the best help he was going to get. Simon quickly realized that this thing was fast as hell, but only in straight lines. It had trouble turning, and even more trouble stopping, so he led it on a random path through the area. His winding path at least was a little more effective than running in a straight line had been. The troll was simply too big, but it would never be as smart as him. With each turn its bellows of frustration came from slightly further behind him.

In their wake, the troll left a trail of ruined awnings, overturned carts, and even a knocked over anvil as Simon darted through the blacksmith shop. It was only then that he saw that the small, whitewashed church had a little light coming from the windows. Was that a sign, he wondered? Was there some kind of sanctuary effect he could get there that would keep evil monsters like this at bay?

Simon wasn’t sure, but he didn’t have any better ideas, and with his legs starting to give out, he couldn’t stay in front of this lumbering behemoth much longer. So, with a final burst of speed, Simon crossed a dangerously open street and tried the door. He realized that if it didn’t open, he would be a dead man, but at the same time, he couldn't bring himself to care too much. He was on level 11 or 12 now and had collected more than enough information to justify another death or two, as long as they weren’t too painful.

The door was unlocked though, and as he dove inside, he slammed the door behind him. It was only when he got up, he realized that he definitely wasn’t where he had been a moment ago. The church he’d entered had been a collection of whitewashed timber and clapboard, with a few high windows and a tiny little bell at the top of the steeple. Where he was standing now wasn’t a church… it was a temple or a cathedral or something.

None of that was the strange part, though. Simon had long since accepted that the crazy goddess in charge had the power to reconnect the world however, she wanted, but he’d never been on a level that was defying the laws of physics until now.

At the front of the pews, where the altar usually would be in a place like this, there was a gaping fiery hole in the ground, and the sheets of fire that erupted from it seemed to stop at very well-defined lines, like some kind of graphical glitch. The more he studied it, though, the more wrong it all became. The stained-glass windows near the front of the chapel had broken and were in the process of shattering, but hung together in mid shockwave. This level had glitched out and frozen completely somehow.

At least that’s what he thought until someone walked out of one of the sheets of fire and said, “Oh, look - a new player in our little game.”