Death After Death-Chapter 364 - One Last Time

After a couple of days, Simon spent very little time meditating or trying to understand what they needed to do next. The reason for that was very simple. Meditating didn’t burn many calories, and he knew what he needed to do now. He needed to get back in shape.

So, by day he cut down firewood, and by night he hunted goblins. He didn’t try for any large or daring battles. It was more about stalking or lying in wait than it was about taking on large packs. After the first night, when he’d had a chance to practice with his bow a little, most of his kills didn’t even involve his sword, which was a shame, since he had the most fun with that weapon, but it wasn’t the one he needed to practice with.

He only needed to look at his newly regenerated gut to see this wasn’t about fun. Still, despite all of that, he promised himself one thing. I’m going to figure out how to fix this soon. If magic powers the loop, then there’s got to be a way to adjust it, at least a little.

Doing this again to remind himself of how far he’d come wasn’t the worst thing, and a word of greater flesh shaping was a fine stopgap, but he was probably thinking too small. He knew that now. If he could study the souls of strangers and even the weave of fate to a small degree, then what he really needed to do was try to understand Helades’ magic.

He asked the mirror about that a couple of times, but other than showing him the contract he’d signed so long ago without reading it, it wasn’t much help. Still, he examined it several times, searching for some indication that the magic had been woven into the document itself.

“If the magic continues to function, then it has to exist somewhere,” he insisted. “Spoken magic only lasts for a moment.”

There was always the possibility that he was wrong there. Maybe it only lasted for a moment, but it was always the same moment. There were no rules that said that all magic everywhere had to operate the same. The magic of a Goddess might be entirely different than the magic of mortals. It might even be likely, considering how many different kinds of human magic he’d seen.

There were hardly just spoken and written forms, either. There were gestural forms of magic as well, and considering the fact that the future version of himself seemed to know them, he almost certainly would one day. That was his only real regret that he hadn’t lingered longer in his life with the Magi. They might have hidden the most powerful bits from their recruits, but the level of sophistication and knowledge they had, well, that was hard to beat.

That’s what I’ll ask her when I get to level 40, he decided. What he would ask her at that critical point was an ever-shifting goal, but surely he knew enough about magic now to have a conversation with her about it. If he didn’t, his best bet was probably to ask the demons, and he already knew those conversations would cost more lives than he was willing to give, making them a nonstarter.

Even his desire to unravel Helades’ mysteries didn’t stop him from losing weight, though. He spent weeks at the cabin to do just that, subsisting largely off of fish, with only a few roast fowl for variety. The food was tasteless considering he had little in the way of salt, herbs, or even bread to pair it with, but that was fine. The worse it tasted, the less he ate, and the less he ate, the faster his excess pounds melted off.

Simon found it vaguely ironic that at first he’d thought the goblins were an insurmountable problem that forced him into the Pit when he could deal with them so easily now. He could have stayed here forever, culling them every few nights to keep their predations to a minimum.

As the weeks passed, he started to glimpse the man that he always should have been instead of the slug he’d been for so long. He was growing tempted to dig into the cabin’s root cellar from one side or the other just to get at the potatoes and turnips he knew to be in there, but he resisted, since he had no idea if that would undo the first floor as it was currently resolved, or not.

That time wasn’t simply spent hungering or sweating, though. Once the goblins were under control and he had no more energy to exercise, he would run various experiments with his sight or converse with the mirror.

He studied the portal beneath his bed, noting the lensing effect on the auras of the swamp beyond. It was a subtle thing, but he felt like if he studied it long enough, he might get real insight into the magic that powered the dislocation in time and space. Other times, he lay on the roof at night for a couple of hours and meditated on the road that lay ahead as he stared at the stars.

He saw no secrets hidden in the constellations, but if he lay there long enough, the future opened up before him, and he saw all the different directions he could continue in. Anything more than a few hours or days in the future existed mostly as a puff of smoke; it lingered for only an instant before resolving into a new shape entirely. Still, most of these ghosts lead to Brin’s Capital, Leipzen.

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That was a city that he’d wanted to return to for a while, but one that he feared, because of how easily it would be to undo any number of timelines. He’d worked hard to provide the King a second lease on life and avoid a succession war, even if the prince didn’t deserve it.

“Maybe he’ll grow into the role,” Simon told himself, but he didn’t believe it.

Amidst the various possible futures he glimpsed, he found flashes of violence there as much as he saw images of himself wearing a white cloak. Those impressions fell in line rather nicely with his future experiences, too. He might have stopped the zombies from spreading across the land in a fairly permanent way, but in doing so, at least according to the Oracle, he’d exacerbated the time it would take that region to unify. That wasn’t the biggest loss since he knew from future lives that those reunifications seemed to be short-lived in the face of Murani armies.

“God, I wish I’d studied more history,” he sighed. While Simon doubted he would have remembered anything specific from it at this point, he was sure that kingdoms on Earth had gone through some similar period, and any sort of analog would grant him insight. Sadly, other than the name of the occasional country, like France or Germany, or an empire like Rome, all of that was lost to him. He knew there were Mongols because he’d made notes about them in the mirror, but he couldn’t exactly recall why he’d compared them to the centaurs he’d fought in the badlands anymore, and hadn’t thought to explain the context to his future selves.

Note to self, he reminded himself silently. Always give more context than you think you’ll need.

As if all of that wasn’t confusing enough, sometimes when he looked out to the northeast and tried to decide where the best odds at meeting with the Unspoken in the right way were, he saw other versions of himself. These weren’t the possible futures he might be able to trigger and experience. These were the versions of him that were actively running around level zero right now.

He hadn’t been sure until he saw himself coming out of the goblin-infested cave in Ordenvale, covered in blood. He didn’t actually remember getting that banged up, but he supposed that he had been. That wasn’t the only him there was, though. Once he started looking around, he realized there were others too, but only if he looked for them in the right spot.

He could see the version of himself that had raced up to the barrow mounds, too, and he expected that if he looked hard enough, he’d be able to find out more about what his doppelganger was up to. He tried that for a few nights running, but eventually gave up when those efforts got no results.

If he is me, then he’s been right here and knows exactly where I’ll look, Simon reminded himself. Then, almost as an afterthought, he made notes about all the places he’d looked in case it was relevant later.

Make more notes than you really need. That became a mantra for him in those days, but eventually, he decided it was time to go. He looked more like a half-starved son of privilege than the Simon he usually was, but that was fine for what was going to happen next.

The following day, Simon got ready as he always did, with his trusty sword, standard armor, and his crossbow, since he was out of arrows for his shortbow thanks to his goblin hunting efforts. Then, he headed north, out of his valley. This was a way he hadn’t taken on level zero before, though he supposed it wouldn’t matter which way he actually took out into the real world since he’d never lingered here for nearly a month before. The way was going to be clear regardless, but he’d rather be safe than sorry.

The journey went about as he expected. It was more grueling than he thought it should have been, but his endurance still wasn’t what it should be, so he accepted it. Still, at the edge of his valley, he saw something he hadn’t expected.

Throughout the hike, he’d expected to see something where Helades’ magic ended and the rest of the world began, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so dramatic. There was a bright line that separated the soap bubble he’d been inhabiting, and the world beyond. The effect was similar to the portal he’d studied before, only magnified.

Where he stood now, the colors were more intense and brighter, but just over the line, they dimmed to something he considered more typical. That was where the twisting and snarling began, too. Just over the line, the threads that connected him to the rest of the world became a whirlpool-shaped knot.

“No wonder I couldn’t find my alter-ego,” he thought as he calmly observed the sight.

He had ten times the threads connecting him to this region alone as Aranna had to all of Abresse, and she’d spent a decade there. It certainly spoke to the number of places he’d touched the world, and though Simon stood there for an hour trying to comprehend it, he eventually forced himself to move on.

He might study the sight for a year, but all it would do would inspire future paintings. He could see the Goddess’s hand here, but not well enough to divine her methods.

“Maybe next time,” he said hopefully as he walked out into the wider world. For a moment, there was a tempest of magic as things shifted, then it was still once more. “If I don't use any magic for a life or two, who knows what I’ll be able to see next time.”

Simon turned around when he was a few steps away, but there was no trace of Helade’s touch any longer. The way behind him was normal, and he was fairly certain that wouldn’t change even if he walked all the way to the cabin.