Death After Death

Chapter 88: What in the Hell

This time, when they arrived, the miller was already hard at work, using the gusty winds to turn wheat into flour. He was an earnest, hardworking fellow, and he didn’t seem nearly as sinister with the sun out, and though he seemed a little concerned when Simon stepped into his windmill armed and armored, the man’s demeanor quickly softened when he saw Simon had two children with him.

“I found them at the site of a … well, let’s call it a battle,” Simon explained. “Owlbears. They were the only survivors.”

“May the Gods preserve us,” the old man said as he turned his attention to the children.

Simon let them do the talking for a bit, but when Eddik was about to brag about what a big shot his father was, Simon cut in, saying, “his family are merchants. Doubtlessly, when they find the caravan wreckage, there will be some small reward for the good person that takes care of them in the interim.”

“I don’t need no reward to do a good turn for those who have already been through so much,” the miller said with a shake of his head. “Now, let's find all of you something to eat before you all pass out in front of me.”

Simon had been about to make his exit, but a little warm food wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. He’d powered through several unexpected levels now, and he had no idea whether or not he was going to have to fight the troll next.

He kind of hoped that he would, to be honest. He could use the chance to get some of the aggression out of his system. A little rest before that would probably be warranted, though.

Inside the man’s house, they met his almost equally old wife, but after a few whispered words, she got the message and turned the conversation to brighter topics. She’d obviously almost finished cleaning up their breakfast but quickly started some new oats boiling when she saw the traumatized, bloodstained children.

She didn’t take a liking to Simon right away, but after Eddik explained how Simon had slain the owlbear in single combat to save them, she was friendlier. When the boy explained afterward that he’d struck down the second with lighting, she gave Simon a worried glance. However, when he started laughing and playing it off as a bit of childish exaggeration, she did too, fortunately, and the situation resolved itself.

So, after some porridge and the last of the bacon, Simon decided to take a short rest in the hay loft of the man’s barn, where he got a couple of hours of shut-eye. It might have been that he pulled the ladder up after him, but no one tried to murder him in his sleep, and when he made his way back to the miller sometime after noon, the girl no longer looked at him like he was a bad case of stranger danger.

“You’re a good man,” Simon told the miller as he pressed a gold coin into the palm of his hand. "I’d stay around to help out, but there’s a troll not far from here that isn’t going to slay itself.”

“Troll?” he bristled as he pocketed the coin. “No one told me about a troll in the area. Do you think I should bring in the sheep?”

“Nah,” Simon said as he went to say goodbye to the kids. “I’ve got a ways to go before I get where I’m going. You should be fine.”

Eddik was just as clingy as he'd been the last time. He promised Simon a great reward if only he’d wait until his father fetched them. Part of him was tempted to see wherever it was they were off to. It was a new adventure, but when he thought about his more urgent mission, he decided that it didn’t rank. Kaylee was stiff and formal when she thanked him and curtsied only very slightly, but he’d take it.

Simon walked down the hill toward the covered bridge, whistling tunelessly a few minutes later. The location was familiar, but the fact that he couldn’t see a village on the other side told him everything he needed to know.

“No troll today, huh?” he said after he cast a minor light spell and noticed the closed doors of the church on the far side of the bridge. “Shame.”

For the longest time, he hadn’t realized that the town between the bridge and the church was a different level, but it was the only way for the count to make sense if you tried to figure out which levels lay between the tenth and twentieth floors.

Inside this level, at least, hadn’t changed. The area around the altar and the wall behind it was still hopelessly shattered, and only the distorted chalk ring that looked like it was about to burst held it back. Inside the demon that was always there was painting instead of eating, and he didn’t look up as Simon approached.

“You’ve been gone quite a long time this time, my friend,” he said, not taking his eyes away from the canvas.

“Time doesn’t start on a level until I get close to the portal,” Simon said as he got as close to the boundary as he dared. “So you’ve got to be guessing.”

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“Am I?” the devil asked as it turned to face him for the first time. “No, I don’t think I am. I can see it in your eyes. Years and years of your life since you last paid me a visit. A few setbacks, a victory or two, and, of course, a terrible loss. It really has been a while.”

Simon had watched a few videos on cold reading. He knew this was just a trick, but the sincerity with which the well-dressed demon delivered those lines made certainty harder.

In the end, despite trying his very hardest to hold his sorrowful gaze, he looked past the questioner to his painting. The oil painting was well executed, but Simon didn’t recognize the location. It was of a wealthy foreign city that he’d never been to that was in the midst of burning down. For a moment, he thought it might have been the volcano level, which would have made for a clever bit of taunting, but the harbor was all wrong, and the mountain behind the oceanfront palace wasn’t nearly tall enough.

“Very nice work,” he told the demon. “Is that where demons like you go on vacation?”

“It’s a place I haven’t been in a very long time,” the demon said wistfully, “but I hope one day to go again. Perhaps if you were to let me out of this cage, I could take you there. We’d have a wonderful time.”

“I’m sure,” Simon said, turning away to study the binding circle. “But somehow, I don’t think that would be a very good deal for me.”

“You like deals, do you?” the devil asked, suddenly sounding eager. “We could make one of those. A very good deal, too, I’m sure.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” he mumbled as he focused on the chalk symbols. “Demons are known for offering wonderful deals.”

“Well, wherever you come from, I trust we are known for delivering exactly what we promise,” he said with a flourish. “It’s a point of pride for us, you know.”

“It’s not a point of pride,” Simon said, making sure he didn’t get too close to the line. “It’s your nature; at least, that’s how it is in the story. You give people exactly what they ask for, and in the end, that’s what damns them.”

“Oh, our reputation precedes us then,” the demon smiled. “Hell’s reach is vast, after all. I'm not surprised.”

“Just like I wouldn’t be surprised if you offered to help get me out of the Pit, and that the only way to do that was a path through hell,” Simon sighed as he continued his conversation without looking up from the hastily sketched binding ring.

“Well, actually, Hell is the only way out of the Pit,” the demon said with a shit-eating grin, but Simon already knew that he would. That might be true, but there was at least one other way out, and that was to beat it, which is what he was focused on right now. This was a knot he would need to unravel eventually, and it wasn’t something he could guess at.

Even trying to read the binding circle was challenging, though. The symbols had been written sloppily, and in places, they were distorted, which made them all but impossible to read. Though he understood many of them at this point, there were a few that he either didn’t know or which were illegible. For just a moment, he was tempted to say that if he erased the root symbol or crossed out the main transfer sigil, the whole thing would collapse, but even as he reached toward it, he pulled away, unsure.

“Oh, I definitely wouldn’t touch that one,” the demon taunted. “Terrible things would happen if you touched that rune.”

Simon strode and walked away. He should just keep going toward his goal, but part of him told him that this would be an easy win if he could just figure it out. He felt so close, but he was certain that fucking this up would be just as bad, if not worse, than zombie level. Getting sucked into hell because he cut the red wire instead of the blue wire would be a mistake he’d get to regret for a very long time.

In the end, he decided he couldn’t do either, so while the devil tormented him, he walked over to the baptismal pool, which was bone dry, and poured in his water skin.

“Can you hear me mirror?” he asked, feeling slightly stupid. “You told me this would work. Where are you?”

A few seconds later, to his eternal surprise, blue letters wavered on the surface of his reflection. “Moving between places and times in search of you is more challenging than you know.”

“That’s fine,” Simon said. “I’m going to need you to record some symbols for me to research later. Can you do that if I inscribe them one at a time?”

‘Of course,’ the mirror wrote simply.

Simon wrote down the first few off the top of his head, and the water glowed in bright blue streaks like some primitive touch screen as he made the marks on its calm surface. After that, he was forced to make half a dozen trips over to the binding circle to investigate the next group to make sure he got them right.

Each time he did so, the devil would tease him. “Well, that’s not a technique you see very often,” he said, sounding slightly less confident than he usually did after the first trip.

On the second and the third, he tried to distract Simon with subtle insults, but Simon just ignored the demon and focused on the task at hand. After that, the devil appeared to go back to painting, but Simon could feel the thing fuming and smiled slightly to himself as he finished documenting the circle.

When that was done, he said, “Alright, mirror, show me the big picture.”

Slowly, the individual runes he’d drawn came into view, and each snapshot assembled itself into the larger whole until he could see the ring in full. It was still distorted and ugly, but all the critical details were there. One day, when he had more time, he could draw it out without the distortions onto paper or vellum and then put the corrected version back into the mirror for further study.

That was not a today goal, though. He didn’t need to solve this right now. He just needed a way to study it so he could be sure of the solution once he came upon one. That was the only way to keep from being dragged into hell as far as he was concerned.

When Simon was finished, he walked slowly toward the exit, and when the demon said nothing, he asked, “Aren’t you going to give me some cryptic goodbye?” he asked, but the demon did nothing but glare at him until he stepped into the warlock’s cave.