Death After Death

Chapter 66: A Single Moment

The swamp was gone, just like the forest had been before. Simon could see that, but he had no idea why that was the case. He definitely wasn’t remembering it too well. If you had told him that last time it had been swamp then plague city, he might have believed it - but it had definitely been around here somewhere.

He rubbed his side as he remembered getting stabbed with that wooden spear and recalled how disgusting it had been to heal the wound, knowing that there were probably still splinters in it. Knowing what he knew now, that would have almost certainly become a fatal infection in time. After all, back then, he’d only tried to close the wound. He hadn’t thought about how he’d have to make the muscles knit back together or remove the splinters and filth that would have inevitably caused an abscess to form.

Simon would never say that his death right after that to the basilisk was a good thing, but it had likely spared him a lot of suffering in that sense. If he’d gotten blood poisoning and died of a fever while cursing Helades name, he might never have tried healing magic again, though, and that would have been a serious mistake.

The magic of this world was a lot more manual than it should be, in his opinion, but there was no denying that it was useful. He just didn’t see how a healing spell would be useful to the medieval mind for anything but the most minor of wounds. Why should magic require advanced anatomical knowledge? Was there an MRI spell he could learn to actually diagnose wounds?

He chuckled to himself as he studied the sand-blown ruins on the other side of the portal, “The better question is, why the hell doesn’t everyone and their brother know these spells already? I think it would be kind of hard to keep a secret like this.”

He was just stalling, though. He knew that. He had no trouble facing death, even horrible splintery death at the hands of the lizardmen. The threat of being a statue, though… that was so much worse.

He took a deep breath to calm himself as he realized he was shaking. He couldn’t handle another century as a statue. He just couldn’t. This time, it would be worse. He’d be trapped in that stone with nothing but the memory of his dead wife and child until the sorrow devoured him whole.

Just contemplating that horrible fate was enough to allow the deep sorrow that he’d been repressing for… how long had it been? Weeks? Months?

Not long enough, he decided as he pulled his bow from his back and stepped through the portal, letting the fear wash over him. Purpose had been the only thing that kept him going for a while now. Perhaps he’d only bothered to defend the burning village because he needed that fear of death to keep his demons at bay.

After all, more than perhaps anyone alive, he knew what a bad idea it was to fight so many orcs at once. Just like he knew what a terrible idea it was to return to this desert. As he looked around to make sure the coast was clear in all directions, he strung his bow, noting that it was a little harder than it usually was. He wondered how it could be that he’d gotten so much older that it was starting to make him weak as he rushed to the cover of a nearby wall and looked around.

His mind was about to start to go down that path when the sound of movement caused his mind to shut down as every muscle in his body tensed. As he peeked around the corner, he decided it was a false alarm, but that wasn’t something he was going to take for granted.

Simon started to thread between the ancient statues that might or might not be men in the same predicament he’d been in not so long ago as he started to stalk his prey. He was not the best hunter, and what little skill in tracking he possessed was nearly useless in the sandy wastes, but he had gotten pretty good at killing things during his time in the pit, and he was sure that basilisks died like everything else if you hit them in the right spot.

Part of him needed to find it so that he could start to plan, and another part that was almost as large just wanted to find the portal and rush past it. He couldn’t do that, though. It was like the skeleton knight all over again. If he ran from this creature while all the rage and pain of Freya’s loss burned within him, then he’d be running forever.

Simon stalked the temple complex for almost twenty minutes, noting the occasional half-eaten statue or old tracks. The whole time, he constantly worried that he would find it just as he turned a corner and came face to face with it, only to be instantly turned to stone. That didn’t happen, though.

Instead, when he finally saw it from almost fifty yards away, it was ambling slowly away from him as its awkward six-legged form moved through the shadows of a colonnade. A dozen thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant. How far could its petrification attack reach? How quickly could it use it? How many times a day would it be effective? Where was its most vulnerable spot?

Those concerns were comforting, of course, in their way, but there was anger there, too, and Simon took hold of that instead. This was the creature that had almost driven him insane. It had turned him to stone and then taken decades to devour his corpse at its leisure. It was an intolerable thought.

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He looked around, trying to decide where the best places for cover and ambush were. He looked to the temple on the left and the forum on the right and decided what he had to do. He could use his force spell to help him get around; he’d practiced that plenty. He was only going to get one shot from each direction and each opportunity, though. He was sure of that. Anything more than that was just begging to be statuefied.

“Hey! Ugly!” he yelled, already drawing back on the bow.

The giant lizard immediately started to turn, but before he even faced Simon completely, he’d released, aiming for the creature’s head, and was pulling back behind the corner before he even saw that the blow had landed. There was no time for that.

Last time, he seemed to recall he’d had about two seconds. Enough time to reach for his sword and pull it out. This time, he was going to assume the answer was closer to zero, though.

“G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? V???r???ä???z???i??????,” he yelled, imagining lightning striking the spot where he was fairly sure the creature still stood. He felt the hairs on his arms begin to prickle from the static electricity, and then there was the roar from the heavens as the bolt struck the earth hard enough that the thunder resonated in his chest.

Simon waited a moment for the temporary deafness to subside. He’d hoped for silence, but the shrieks of pain he heard echoing were a closer runner-up. He considered looking around the corner but suppressed the urge. Instead, he turned and ran. If an arrow to the face and a lightning bolt hadn’t killed it, he didn’t want to be here when it arrived.

“Ä????????????f?????v??????????r????ú?????m????? ????? Ó??o???n???b??????t?????????,” he said under his breath. Lesser force. It was a technique he’d practiced extensively after he’d healed from his head wound, but he still found it thrilling as he was tossed into the air. It was like a double jump in a video game, and though landing could be a touch painful, he’d gotten used to it as he landed on the temple, ten feet above where he’d been before.

He drew his bow and waited for his quarry to come around the corner again, and when it did, he noted the scorch marks of a blast near its left hind foot and the stone shaft of what had been an arrow sticking out from its neck. This time, he took the extra second to aim since the thing wasn’t looking up just yet and then released an arrow, ducking out of sight and scuttling back the way the basilisk had just come before he could see if he’d managed to poke out the thing’s third eye.

That was what he really wanted. If he could turn off that terrible petrification attack, then he could get up close and personal with his sword and really make sure it was all the way dead this time. The thing howled in pain again, and for a moment, Simon thought he’d finally succeeded. Then he saw a stone bird fall out of the sky and knew that either he’d missed or the creature didn’t need a third eye to ruin his day.

Once Simon got far enough behind it that he didn’t think the creature would hear him over the noises of rage it was making, he dropped down into the soft sand. From here, he could see the back half of the creature, and he doubted very much that his bow would do much to the thick, stony scales of the creature, so this time, he tried a different tactic, and as he ran for the pillars, he summoned fire instead.

“G????????????r???????v?????u?????u????????? ???????M???????e???i???????r??????è?????n????,” he yelled, throwing a wave of fury at his opponent that was probably hot enough to fuse the sand the thing was standing on, but it had a giant muscular body, so he wasn’t going to count on the idea that he might be able to freeze it in place anymore than the idea that he’d killed it.

He caught his breath in the shade of a pillar as the edges of his vision greyed, and he had trouble standing. Using two greater spells back to back was incredibly taxing, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever used so much magic so quickly before. He might have another couple of minor spells in him, but that was about it. If he pushed himself much harder, he was going to collapse, or worse.

Still, the thing he was fighting didn’t seem to be doing much better than him, though. Its screams of anger had become moans of pain, and though it was approaching him yet again, it was in bad shape. Not only was it moving much slower, but it was dragging at least one or two feet.

Part of Simon was tempted just to run for it. He’d probably already done enough damage to this thing that it wouldn’t survive, but he couldn’t. Letting it die of blood loss or trauma or whatever finally did it in wouldn’t be good enough. He needed to be the one to strike it down.

So, he dropped his bow and pulled out his flaming sword while he waited. It got so close that he could hear the sound of its labored breathing and smell the coppery scent of its blood while he stood there holding his breath. It was only when the thing’s ugly whiskered snout appeared around the corner that he whispered “Ä????????????f?????v??????????r????ú?????m????? ????? Ó??o???n???b??????t?????????,” and used the minor force to kick up a cloud of dust on the far side of the creature.

The basilisk whipped its head around and hissed at what it thought was its attacker, but all it did was expose its thick neck behind the larger scales, letting Simon bring down his blade with all the force he could muster.

The first chop largely bounced off the scales, chipping a few of them but little else. Even the fire magic wasn’t enough to make a difference. The thing turned back toward him, but he was already in motion, now jumping on the thing’s back. He was committed now. He had a wounded tiger by the tail, and if he let go, he would be lost.

If the armor had been too thick for a chop, then he would try a stab instead. This time, he brought the tip of his blade down hard at an angle between two thick scales and was rewarded by the sound of sizzling meat as his flaming weapon slid further and further into the thing’s flesh.

The basilisk let out an unearthly shriek as it tried to shake him from its back, but Simon held on. When that didn’t work, it rolled over, trying to grind Simon into the sand and crush him to death. All that did was expose its soft, vulnerable underbelly, though, and as Simon jumped off, he was able to almost disembowel it with a slash, releasing a slurry of gravel and flesh bits on the ground when it finally completed its roll.

It still moved after that, but weakly. It had no strength left, and as Simon started hacking off its head, the thing no longer put up a fight.