Death After Death

Chapter 32: A Rock and A Hard Place

The troll was easier to deal with than Simon thought. Instead of trying to run past it, or burn it to a crisp, he just intentionally cast his fire spell poorly, and the shower of sparks and feeble streamers sent the thing running just long enough for Simon to get to the church and slam the door behind him.

It was a terrible way to have to throttle the magic, Simon thought, but what the hell else was he going to do? Actually casting mega-fire at full power was not only exhausting, it was dangerous. If he’d actually done that, he would have burned himself alive on the bridge, and then he would have had to come back to fight the troll again anyway.

Because that’s just how The Pit was. Simon could see it in the expression that the asshole demon as he just sat there and watched Simon while he approached the distorted summoning circle.

“Back so soon?” The demon asked with a shit eating grin. "Usually people take a bit longer."

Simon couldn’t figure out if that was supposed to be a compliment or an insult, so he just ignored it while he focused on studying the circle. It wasn’t quite the same as before, but as far as he could tell, none of the runes had changed. It honestly didn’t look too different from the hell rifts that one of his favorite action role playing games used in the second act. He smiled at that. Level 13 or 14 out of 99 didn’t seem to be the second act to him, but he’d take it.

“Do you have anything useful to say, or are you just going to fuck with me?” Simon asked the demon. While Simon had literally all the time in the world, he had almost none to spare for a creature like this, that had bad news written all over its face.

“No - not just yet, I think,” the demon shrugged. “No point in talking to any of the warriors trapped in here with me. Not until they start to lose hope anyway.”

Simon wanted to ask about that, but even more than that, he wanted to get the hell away from this guy. As Simon started walking down the swirling bits of floor that made the impromptu stairs down to the door, he wished that the creature looked a little more classically demonic. It would have made it much easier to deal with than the they’re-not-so-differant shtick the thing was obviously leaning in to.

The door led to the same dusty castle that Simon had died in last time, but this time he paid more attention to his surroundings, and he avoided any halls or rooms that had anything that could be used as an obvious weapon.

Even the innocuous rooms and halls still had small objects that floated aimlessly, and pictures that looked at him as he passed, but he forced himself to ignore those details, creepy as they were, and focus on the ones that actually might get him killed.

That forced him to take a very different path from last time, as most of the route he’d wandered through before was obviously off limits, but as he ducked into a small bedroom down the third hall he could actually travel in relative safely, he began to think that the right way to handle this was to get outside. That’s what haunted houses always tried to prevent in the movies, right? There had to be a reason that he only ever found stairs going up, but none going down.

As he eyed the window, it looked like it was only a twenty or twenty-five foot drop. He’d break his legs if he jumped, but a rope would make it child's play, he realized.

Unfortunately, he’d left his rope in the cabin. It’s not like he’d ever needed it before, anyway, so he didn’t beat himself up too much about it. “Who would think to carry a rope with them everywhere they go,” he muttered to himself as he set about turning the bedsheets into a new rope.

It took twenty minutes, and the hardest part of the whole thing was ignoring the throbbing from his back where the owlbear’s claws had gotten him a little. When the rope was done, Simon used a full length mirror to take a look, and decided they didn’t look bad enough to try to heal, especially not with the way the poltergeist activity was starting to pick up around him. It was just a little blood, and a couple small cuts in his armor. A couple cuts wouldn’t kill him, but if he stayed here too much longer, the ghosts might.

Getting out of the window was harder than he thought, though. Even though he tied off his crude bedsheet rope to the frame of the ancient bed, he wasn’t completely sure he could trust his weight to it as he eyed the drop.

When Simon saw the mirror begin to float menacingly toward him, he finally decided to take the plunge and climb out of the window and down the side of the building. Unfortunately, the bed he was tied to decided to try to join him.

“Oh shit,” Simon gasped as he felt himself start to sink even though he wasn’t climbing, and put two and two together. In the end, he’d never know if he merely weighed too much to use the bed as a proper anchor, or if the ghosts had decided to help it along. Fortunately, it was too big to fit out the window and crush him like some kind of acme anvil or cartoon piano. Instead, it just wedged in place, letting him climb down as fast as he could just in case.

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Outside, the sky was heavy and leaden, which was perfect for the rest of the vibe this place had, but it made it impossible for him to tell if it was just after dawn or just before sunset. Simon was willing to bet it was the latter, because that one would screw him harder, but that was fine. As long as nothing in this level turned him into a zombie for months, he’d be back in a few hours to do it all over again as many times as he needed to.

Simon started with the nearest outbuildings. He checked a barn, three sheds, a couple guest cottages, and a greenhouse where everything inside had died. He didn’t find anything unusual in any of those. Not only was there no gate, but there was no haunting activity either. That seemed to be limited to the main house.

Simon found a very overgrown hedge maze shortly after that, but decided against checking it because it creeped him out. Nothing good happened in there, he could tell. So instead, he just circled around until he finally found the front door to the house.

Simon wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find when he opened it. He thought that he might find a vampire count who would explain his whole plan to him, or perhaps a ghostly countess doomed to keep reliving some horrible moment of her life over an over. All Simon knew was that if this had been a video game, when he opened those gilded, paneled doors, he would have gotten one hell of a cutscene.

Instead, he found a cave. A dark, dingy cave that more properly belonged under the mansion, not in its foyer.

It took Simon several seconds longer than it should have for him to realize that this was the gate to the next level, and not a truly bizarre decorative choice. After that, all that was left to do was to go inside.

The cave was an old limestone formation with stalagmites and stalactites that had mostly fused into uneven, misshapen pillars. Simon didn’t have a torch, but once he was inside, he let his eyes adjust a bit. There was a dim light coming from further on in the cave, and while he wouldn’t want to fight in the near darkness, it was enough for him to walk slowly forward without tripping and breaking his neck.

Up ahead somewhere Simon could hear muted chanting. At first, he couldn’t quite make out the words, but as he got closer he began to piece them together. Someone was beseeching gods for some sort of divine favor. Simon obviously hadn’t walked into this at the beginning, so he wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but the fact that the wizard or priest or whatever he was talking about blood sacrifice meant it couldn’t be anything good.

Simon found the wizened old man standing in a protective circle as he continued to cast his strange spell. It wasn’t real magic, of course, because nothing interesting was happening. This guy clearly didn’t understand as much about the world as Simon did, because he’d probably been studying magic for decades, whereas Simon had been doing it for a couple of weeks and had actual magic to show for it.

Simon thought about just ignoring this dude and trying to sneak past him. With his little circle and a few candles, Simon didn’t think it likely he could hurt anyone. He was obviously just a crazy old man. That changed when Simon heard him say, “grant me my boon and I will not stop with the village. I will burn the whole kingdom to the ground in your name.”

That was enough for Simon. Leaving this guy breathing was clearly a mistake, so he pulled out his crossbow and shot him in the back. The wanna-be mage crumpled immediately into a pool of his own blood as soon as the bolt embedded itself in his left lung. He struggled uselessly for a second, but didn’t rise after that.

Simon waited for a few seconds for the other shoe to drop. This was clearly too easy for any level in the pit. It was easier than the rats on the first floor, so there was no way that this was all there was to it, but nothing happened.

Finally, after the moment had passed, and it all felt terribly anticlimactic, Simon stepped forward, over the body of the madman and towards his ritual area. There he found all sorts of strange powders and ritual implements, but none of them particularly interested Simon. Instead, he reached for the book. Even if this guy didn’t know any real magic, it would be interesting to see what strange ideas he had.

He never got that far. As the shadows moved slightly, he pulled his hand back as a giant shape suddenly loomed out of the darkness and brought its stony hands down towards Simon’s skull.

It was a fucking golem. How did a guy like this who didn’t even know how to cast magic properly have a golem, Simon wondered. He’d never find out, though. At least not this run. As the golem brought its fists down, it shattered the table where everything had been laid out, sending pages flying as grimoire was crushed by the titanic blow.

Simon ran. Not because he had no way to fight several hundred tons of animate rock, even though he didn’t. He ran because it was terrifying. The thing was like The Hulk, made out of granite, and a single blow would turn him into a fine red paste.

Running headlong across the uneven ground of the cave was much harder than picking his way through the darkness had been. Even though Simon was much faster than the golem, it gained a little more on him every time he tripped over some obstacle, and Simon only barely reached the wooden stairs before the golem reached him.

There, at least, Simon was safe. The stairs were flimsy wooden planks that barely bore Simon’s weight, and would never let the golem follow. Even so, he didn’t delay. The last thing he wanted was for that nightmare to start throwing boulders or something at him.

When Simon reached the top of the stairs, he opened the door without hesitation and slammed it behind him. It was just someone’s kitchen, after all. Even if all the knives suddenly sprang to life and started attacking him at once, he’d still have a better shot than going one on one with a stone giant like that.