Death After Death

Given the ugly state of affairs with his hands, he didn’t hold out much hope for the rest of his body, but he still needed to know. Unfortunately, he couldn’t move around well enough to unwrap the bandages that covered his chest, and he was in too much pain to sit up. So, instead, he grabbed his drinking glass, broke it on the nightstand, and then used the biggest part to start cutting away at the bandages.

Simon didn’t try to be careful. He couldn’t hide any of this work from whoever came on to check on him in a minute or an hour. He just needed to get well enough that he wasn’t going to die or find out if that was the best solution, and then he could decide what to do. There was no sense in beheading himself unless he was permanently crippled, or maybe, not even then. He wasn’t sure what he’d do next exactly, but he didn’t really feel like throwing in the towel.

Why not just start with a clean slate? He told himself as he cut away at his bandages before shooting back, Have you seen my slate? It’s not that clean. Weight loss. Working out - I’d need to make new fireproof armor… it’s a whole thing.

The armor might be a valid reason to keep going. It would take him weeks or months to replace, depending on the circumstances, but what would he need it for? Duh, Dragon… The words came back immediately. He hadn’t been planning to fight the dragon, of course. He’d been planning to… Well, he hadn’t really thought about it past the whole volcano thing, and…

Thinking about any of that immediately made him think about his doppelgänger, and for a moment, that was enough to still Simon’s hand. Compared to that, none of the rest of these mysteries mattered. If he… If some version of him was out there causing some of these problems, then that needed to be his top priority.

“No,” he whispered to himself as he returned his focus to the matter at hand while he looked at the ugly bruise that colored the left half of his rib cage. “My top priority is making sure I don’t die. My evil twin can be handled after that.”

Simon used a word of healing on his chest after he’d probed all his bruises and felt for broken bones. There were enough broken ribs on his left side that he felt sure a lung or something worse must have been punctured, so he took his time, trying to hold all of that in his mind before he finally said the words.

The relief he felt was palpable, but so was the fatigue that washed over him as his body tried to fix everything on his wishlist. He’d left the bruises and the burns in place, no matter how ugly they looked, but he could breathe deeply again, so that was worth it.

Simon sat up, or at least he tried to… the pain in his back was so bad that he instantly knew where the problem was with his feet. He rolled onto his side and gingerly reached back to prod his spine. It was a painful mistake, but that didn’t stop him. He didn’t know if it was broken, fractured, or just plain crushed, but everything in his upper lumbar hurt, and everything below that didn’t feel like anything at all.

It would be easy just to start over, he reminded himself. The experience penalty for a reset can’t be too bad, can it? The last part gave him pause, but only enough to wonder what the penalty for killing himself actually was in the pit. He would need to measure that. Not right now, though.

Right now, he kept going. Then, when he had what felt like the complete picture of what his damaged spine might look like, he spent the better part of a minute breathing deeply as he pictured it. Half of that was spent trying to decide whether or not he should try to use a greater word, but all of it was spent desperately trying to remember snippets of biology class and back pain commercials to remember exactly how the spin fit together.

The most important part, of course, was making sure that the spinal cord was connected, but there were so many moving parts he was certain to screw it up. There were pads that fit between them and fluid somewhere, but he wasn’t sure.

There were times when Simon wondered how much of a given spell was the magic and how much of it was the instructions he gave it, but this time, he left nothing to chance, and when he finally worked up the nerve to whisper “Gervuul Hyakk,” it was as detailed a spell as he had ever put together.

That was fortunate because trying to force those words of power from his throat in his weakened state was harder than he thought they would be. Despite the familiar spell, he almost choked on them, and he felt his soul strain under the opposites of physical weakness and magical power. In the end, he didn’t get to see the results because unconsciousness took him before he did more than feel the warmth and tingle of magic as it started to stir through him.

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When Simon awoke next, the sun was bright in the sky, and someone was talking. No, someone was reading to him. For a second, he struggled to make out the words. Is someone reading me my last rites? Is this a religious ceremony? He wondered. No, it’s a children’s story.

As Simon slowly swam through molasses to return to consciousness and to the real world, he listened to a story about three children trying to navigate through a dark forest. The first one decided not to leave the path and was set upon by bandits. The second one decided that it would be safer to cut through the dark woods and leave little bread crumbs so he wouldn’t get lost. That worked fine until an owlbear found the crumbs, which led it straight to the boy to gobble him up.

Simon didn’t get the chance to find out how the third boy surmounted the challenge, because that was when his narrator noticed that he was stirring and stopped the story. “Welcome once more to the land of the living, Sir Simon," she said with a smile on her face.

Until that moment, Simon had thought it was the maidservant who was reading to him, but when she smiled, he noticed how pretty she was, and that misapprehension fell quickly away. For a moment, he wondered who she was, and then he saw the crown. After that, it didn’t take a genius to work out that the Queen of Ionar was sitting by his deathbed reading him a bedtime story.

“How long… this time?” he managed to ask.

“Since you almost ruined all of Doctor Nolanth’s hard work,” she asked lightly. “Two days. He said you might not recover from that.”

A quick glance down revealed that he was once again swaddled in bandages from head to toe. “Sorry…” he whispered. “The fevers…”

“Indeed,” she agreed. “The doctor said it was certainly a temporary madness caused about by brain swelling. He advised that we drill into your skull to relieve the pressure, but I decided against it. You were too weak for another operation.”

Simon nodded weakly at that as she scooted her chair closer, unsure of what to say. “How are you feeling?” she asked finally as she took his bandaged hand in two of her own.

“Better,” he answered, surprised to find that it was so. His body was exhausted, and utterly spent by the magic he’d used on it, but he didn’t hurt half so bad as he had before, so he’d clearly done some good.

“Why am I—” he asked

“Alive? In the palace?” she responded with a smile.

“I do not claim to know who you are, Simon, or why you did what you did,” she answered, squeezing his hand, “but I do know what you did, and I will be grateful to you for it even if the city as a whole will never know that you struck that monster down.”

“But… what was it?” he asked. “The giant.”

“You don’t know?” she said before uttering a laugh so musical that it was almost enough to make him smile on its own despite the pain. “You struck down a monster from the stories just because… what… you felt like it?”

“Well, Ionar has been a nice place so far,” Simon said before he started coughing badly enough that the Queen had to get him some water.

“I’m glad it meets your approval,” she said wryly when he was done, but I’m afraid I can’t let this rest. “If you didn’t know who Brogan was, then why did you slay him in such heroic style?”

“All I knew is that… if the volcano was allowed to erupt, then the city would be forever ruined,” he lied. “It's an old prophecy from the north.”

“Prophecy, huh?” she asked with obvious suspicion, “So a man from far away comes to town to what… stop a volcano from exploding? You’ll forgive me for saying so, Mister Simon, but that seems… unlikely.”

“Maybe I can explain things better when my mind is clearer,” he answered, groping at straws. “Things are… I’m not sure.”

It had been a dumb story on his face. If he’d been in better shape, he would have seen that, but then, he’d never planned for anyone to actually talk to home about any of this. He’d planned to solve the level, beat the elemental, and move on to the next task.

“Why are you here… with that book?” Simon asked finally, trying desperately to change the topic.

“Our beloved doctor said that you could slip away at any moment last night but that the sound of speaking might yet lure your spirit back to its body,” she answered smoothly, “And I could not let our protector slip away without thanking him, so I did everything possible to make sure he stuck around at least that long.”

“Well, I appreciate that,” Simon said, not sure what else to say.

“And I appreciate you slaying a monster from the legends,” the Queen smiled. “If only that had happened for the other lost cities, Ionia would be better for it, Simon.”

The two of them kept talking for some time, and it was only when the doctor returned that the Queen took her leave. The doctor scolded Simon for what he did, explaining that it had nearly cost him his life, but Simon knew the truth. The Bandages were only hiding the ugliness of his wounds. The true war for his survival was happening deep inside his body, and when he’d used magic to heal so many grievous injuries at once, it had strained him to the limit.

He was better now, though, at least a little. He still wasn’t sure if he’d ever walk again, but that was a later problem. For now, he was content to heal in his sick bed, and as his fever wanned, his appetite soared, and he was soon eating full meals again. The palace food was pretty good, even. It just wasn’t as good as the meals he’d make for himself in his little home off the market in the lower city.

It took three weeks for the good news, though. That’s how long it took him to feel anything in his feet. But once he realized he could move his legs again, even if clumsily, he kept trying to wriggle and stretch his toes until, one day, they started to move. That’s when he knew this life wasn’t worth giving up on just yet.