Death After Death

Chapter 6: Level Three

As always, Simon’s first steps down the rickety wooden stairs were tentative, but once he was in the basement he had no trouble dealing with the rats. That he even had to bother was annoying, “Any good game designer would just let you skip this part after you beat it,” he grumbled to himself as he picked through a couple of the boxes nearest the wall to see if they might be hiding a secret passage. All they were holding were potatoes and what he thought might be turnips, not that he’d ever actually seen a turnip before.

He took the second floor slowly, cursing himself for forgetting the spear he’d meant to bring to make searching for pressure plates easier. The bats still showed up, but this time without the fear of surprise that he’d had to deal with last time they were mostly just an annoyance. His only real fear was being crushed to death or falling in that damned pit again. During his search he noted that even though the layout was slightly different this time, the traps were all pretty much the same as what they’d been last time. He wondered if that would hold true for every other level of the dungeon. If every time he had to redo a floor it would have the same monsters but a slightly different layout that would make things pretty easy.

It took two full torches to work his way past all the traps without taking any chances, but this time Simon was rewarded by the sight of another set of stairs leading down to the next floor. “Child’s play,” Simon told himself, smiling even though he still felt nervous. He might have made it look easy this time, but thinking about those spikes still put him back at the edge of panic. He drew his sword as he descended the stairs, trying to be ready for whatever nasty surprise awaited him next.

The next floor turned out to be a cave. It was a moist limestone formation that didn’t seem to have much standing water at least. Frequent drops fell from the ceiling to some of the larger stalagmites that dotted the floor, but it was manageable enough. It looked like the biggest hazard here would be the terribly uneven floor, which was full of rock formations that made the shadows from his torch dance wildly. After he got used to that, it quickly became apparent that an even bigger problem would be the smell.

The whole place stunk. Not a little bit either - not like when he used to drive past the oil refinery on his way to work. It reeked of raw sewage and garbage so strongly that his first fight on this floor turned out to be controlling his own gag reflex. Maybe eating all that food right before coming to this part of the pit wasn’t a good idea, he chastised himself as he looked for someplace dry to sit down before settling on a large rock, giving him a chance to get used to the stench while he studied the room. Now that he was looking he could see bits of garbage and what was probably thoroughly chewed bones scattered around the floor. Clearly this was something’s lair, but he wasn’t sure what. It could have been anything from Orcs to Gnolls.

Not counting the stairs, which now had a closed door at the top of them, that he knew from experience wouldn’t allow him to go back up, it looked like the room had two exits, both of which seemed roughly equal. Not having any good way of determining which one was the right one, he headed out of the one where the trickle of water was leaving the cave. Downhill meant some sort of exit. He was sure of that from the D&D sessions he used to play with his friends.

As he went further down the passage the angle of the cave started to steepen, and he had to put his sword away just to keep a firm grip on the wall so he wouldn’t slide down any of the patches of moss or slime into the abyss. While he explored Simon kept a sharp eye open for claw marks or scorched walls - anything that could offer him a clue as to what might live down here, but he found none.

Instead he found a number of smaller trickles that slowly converged on the one he was following until the tiny stream had practically become an underground river. The further he went, the wider it got, until eventually he reached a bend in the tunnel where the river seemed to take up practically the whole floor. Looking at how fast the dark waters were moving, he decided that swimming it was out of the question, but it looked like maybe the other bank of the river would be walkable for a bit further, if he could cross it somehow, and the air was much less foul here than it had been where he started, so that had to mean he was headed the right way, right?

Reluctantly Simon lit his third torch and backtracked a few hundred feet until he found a spot that was narrow enough that he thought he could jump across it. He backed up, took a running start, and then jumped. The jump was high enough, and long enough, even in the armor he was wearing, but when he landed he slipped on some algae growing on the bank of the river, which sent him splashing and flailing into the water. The only thing he could do in that moment was toss the torch on the bank before it was snuffed out, giving him at least a little light to watch for handholds as he tried desperately to fight the current. It was no good though. All of the handholds were covered in slime, and within seconds he was dragged well out of his meager light as he was swept deeper into the depths.

The darkness was so terrifying that the cold really didn’t bother him until his toes started to go numb. The water was freezing, and even though it was shallow enough, it was impossible to keep his footing as he tried to stand in the shallow spots. The current was just too strong. Simon was about to complain about what an awful mechanic this was when he was flung into the first rock hard enough to cry out in pain. Even as numb as his arm had gotten he was fairly sure that he’d just broken his elbow. That would make it even harder to get out of the river, he realized, starting to panic now. The current was getting stronger and the roar was getting louder - in cartoons that only ever meant one thing.

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Simon desperately swam for a bank of some kind, but there wasn’t one. The river took up all of the tunnel floor and most of the wall now. He realized just how hopeless his situation was almost the precise moment he was thrown over the waterfall. He fell for several long moments terrified that he was about to be dashed on the unseen rocks hidden at the bottom of the falls, but that didn’t happen. Instead he was plunged deep into a frigid pool.

He knew from documentaries that if you were ever in this awful position you should watch which way the bubbles go, and then swim in that direction, but that was impossible in the inky blackness of the watery void that he found himself. He couldn’t let that stop him though, and he started to swim immediately in the direction that he thought was up with one good arm and two numb feet. Whether it was the right direction or not he would never know. Before he breached the surface his burning lungs ran out of air and the last thing his body did was to force him to inhale that dark water before he blacked out.

Simon expected to wake up in his bed still soaked but alive for some reason, and was surprised to find that he was perfectly dry except for the cold sweat that had broken out on his forehead at the idea of what had just happened to him. Drowning might not have been as painful as his previous death, but it was utterly terrifying, and he never wanted to do it again if he could help it. He wasn’t about to sit here for hours and dwell on it like last time though. He needed to find something he could fight with his sword or he would never get better. Traps and rivers were hazards to be avoided, but they wouldn’t give him any experience.

He took a minute for a long swig of wine once his armor was all belted on, but after that he belted on the sword, took three torches, lit one of them, and then grabbed the spear just before he went down. “This would be so much easier if I could have a save file or two, to save my state when I’m ready to go,” he said to himself as he descended the stairs. This time one of the rats managed to bite him once before he finished stomping them, but he was quickly able to locate the stairs in the trap area now that he knew better what he was looking for.

The game was definitely getting easier, but the dying somehow just kept getting more awful.

This time when he reached the cave he headed away from the water flow. He didn’t know what horrors were waiting in those depths, and he had no desire to ever find out. Instead he breathed through his mouth to avoid the worst of the stench as he moved in the opposite direction and slowly made his way up to what he hoped was the surface. At least he did until he heard the echo of what sounded like murderous laughter. That froze Simon in place for almost a minute while he willed himself to move. Something lived in this cave and he was going to have to kill it - that’s just the way it was, he tried to tell himself, but honestly this felt more like a horror movie than an adventure.

That’s when he saw a movement in the shadows up ahead. Simon froze, hoping it wouldn’t notice him, but it was only when it let loose a blood curdling scream before bounding towards him he suddenly realized that it would be impossible to miss the man holding the torch in the dark cave.

Still cursing his stupidity, Simon raised his spear and impaled the creature as it charged him. It was a terrifying moment. He felt the weapon shudder as it impaled the creature’s soft belly, but the goblin still managed to charge most of the way up the spear’s haft before it finally died, spitting and snapping its sharp yellow teeth at him until its final moment. There was no doubt about it - this level was goblins. That made him smile at least. The state of the cave had left him worried that there might be an ogre or something even worse waiting to tear him to pieces, but goblins were about the easiest monster there was, so this would be the perfect chance to practice his sword if the noises from further up in the cave were any indication.

With a flourish Simon pulled his sword free of the scabbard and tossed his torch into the center of the room. This freed hands up for a two handed stance as he brought his weapon up into a guard position. Then he waited for the dumb creatures to attack. He could hear them just down the tunnel, grunting and growling in a language he hoped never to understand. The sounds were almost words, but too glotal and phlegmy to ever really be uttered by a human mouth.

Two came into view one after the other, and Simon brought the sword down hard, cleaving the lumpy head the first goblin in two as it charged at him with its primitive spear in hand. He brought the weapon around in a backhanded swing to try to cleave the second one in two as well, but he misjudged the distance and his blade struck a stalactite in the darkness hard enough that it rattled his bones and he almost dropped the blade.

He managed to keep hold of it, but the moment cost him the initiative, and he was hopelessly off balance when the next one attacked him, burying its rusted dagger deep into Simon’s gut. He felt the cold of the metal more than the pain as the foul creature grinned at him. He reversed his grip on the sword to bring it down and skewer the little bastard, but it responded by twisting the knife hard enough to make Simon cry out in pain before he collapsed backwards, dropping the sword.

The goblin tried to advance again, gurgling and shrieking its foul tongue, but Simon kicked it hard in the face, sending it careening across the room where it landed in a heap, never to rise again. It was hardly the last one though. There were two, no - three more coming in after it now. Simon didn’t bother trying to get up. Instead he pulled the dagger out to wield against the new enemy, but when one of them pulled back on a bow and let an obsidian tipped arrow fly he rolled over retreating into the shadow of a stalagmite.

That kept the arrows away, but it made it almost impossible to see as one of them snuck around the far side and buried its hideous teeth into Simon’s exposed throat. It was a terrifying sensation, and Simon dropped the dagger as he tried to rip the creature free. It resisted more than he would have thought a creature of its size was capable of though and by the time he’d pulled it free along with the chunk of his throat the goblin took with it, he was too weak from blood loss to fight the next two that leapt on to him, clawing and biting the whole time.

Simon lay there for almost two minutes, too weak to defend himself but not yet weak enough to die as these horribly misshapen monsters devoured him alive, cackling to one another about it.