DWinchester
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Death After Death Ch. 151-152
🕑 Added 2024-09-16 13:57:01 +0000 UTCCh. 151 - Back in Bed
Simon woke, groggily. When he felt the blankets beneath him, he assumed that he was back in bed. That was expected, though, and he accepted it as the price of accomplishing the impossible. He only hoped that it was enough to finally solve the damn volcano level. It was only when he tried to rise and felt the pain shoot through him that he realized that’s not what happened. Somehow, he’d survived the impact, but he’d definitely hurt himself in the fall.
“No… no, no, no, no…” someone said. A woman, he thought, it was hard to tell in the dark room. “No, Mister Simon, you can’t move… you can’t, you’re hurt too bad for that.”
It was a woman. Someone motherly, perhaps twice his age. He thought she looked familiar, but he wasn’t completely sure. He’d treated so many people in… whatever city he was in, and his mind wasn’t working so well just now.
“What…” he rasped through parched lips.
“No, you just… you lay there,” she said, pushing him gently but firmly back into the mattress. “And I will fetch the healer.”
But I am the healer, Simon thought to himself. He might have laughed then, but it would have hurt too bad, and he lacked the energy to try. Something was definitely hurt badly, though. He couldn’t feel his toes, and when the woman hurried off, he tried to reach for a glass of water he'd seen on the nearby table. That was when he found out his hands were swaddled in bandages so completely that he might as well have been tied up.
The attempt at motion made his body light up with pain in a dozen places again. He wasn’t going anywhere, and until he recuperated a bit more, he wasn’t even sure he could speak a minor word of healing. Even that insignificant effort would be too much. Instead, he lay there, trying to analyze his situation.
His body was in bad shape. He may or may not be paralyzed from the waist down, and from the taste of blood in his mouth and the uncomfortable sensations he felt when breathing, he was probably bleeding internally. All that was par for the course when falling from a great height, so none of that surprised him.
What surprised him was his surroundings. He wasn’t in his cabin as he’d first thought, but he wasn’t in his home in Ionar either. Thanks to the pungent smell of herbs, he would have been able to tell that, even in the dim light. He was somewhere nicer than either of those places. The soft bed beneath him and the faint smell of incense marked it as either the palace or else a very nice home somewhere in the upper city.
That meant he wasn’t a prisoner, of course, officially at least. He might well be one once they’d gotten him healthy enough to execute, but he really couldn’t say for certain. He had no idea what anyone saw or what they might have noticed when they found him. It was possible that his armor had been so damaged that his runes might not have…
Where is my armor? He thought with a start as he looked down. He wasn’t sure if he was naked or if there were clothes beneath some of these bandages and blankets. He supposed that it didn’t really matter, but he would have liked to see his injuries.
A few minutes later, the woman who had been minding him returned with a man whom Simon recognized, even if he couldn’t remember his name. He was the palace doctor. That answers one question, at least, Simon thought, leaning a little closer to the idea that he was probably under arrest, just not officially yet.
“Ah, he is awake!” the doctor beamed. “This is good news! How are you feeling? Do you remember who you are? Do you know where you are?”
The first time Simon tried to speak, he caused a coughing fit that would have doubled him over in pain if he was capable of doubling over at this moment. Instead, he lay there miserably until they subsided, then he tried again, but quieter. “Water…” he moaned.
“Ah, yes, of course!” the doctor said, gesturing for the woman to handle that. The man struck Simon as more proud of whatever he’d done to save his patient than grateful the man was alive. He’d seen that type before in the years he’d spent in Abresse. “You’ve been unconscious for days, so a thirst is one more indicator of renewed health!”
“Days?” Simon rasped after his throat and tongue were moistened. His head was still fuzzy, but he wasn’t sure if that was a concussion or simply the consequences of everything else that he was suffering from. “Tell me… what happened…”
“To you? I’m not sure,” the doctor said. “There were some lurid reports about a stone giant, and I’m told they found you in some armor at the base of Mount Karkosia in rough shape. Your armor was…”
The man looked like he was about to laugh for a moment, but then he remembered his decorum. And he stopped himself. “Well, I’m not sure what it is you were up to, but even plate mail does precious little against fire, which would explain the burns you have…”
Frostbite, Simon thought to himself. He wasn’t surprised. At no point did the fire burn him, but the cold was certainly more powerful than he’d expected on the rim of the caldera. He hoped it wasn’t too bad, but there was no way to know until he healed the worst of his hurts and started unraveling his bandages and the way he was feeling, that probably wouldn’t be today. He felt too woozy to summon the focus he needed to do a proper healing.
“No, not me…” Simon tried again. “The city… Ionar… the eruption…”
“Oh, the city is fine,” the doctor said. “Lava is still poring into the sea, I’m told, but these things happen. A few houses burned, but the Queen will handle all of that. I… no, we are much more concerned about you, Sir Simon. Can you tell me what you were doing up there?”
“I… I don’t remember,” Simon lied. “I can barely remember who I am… Don’t even recall why I came to Ionar right now…”
“Well, at least you know where you are,” the doctor nodded. “Can you tell me how long you’ve been here?”
“Years? Maybe?” Simon said, unable to remember if it had been three or four years at this point. He’d have to check the case notes in his shop to say for sure.
“Long time.” he sighed. “Healing. Quiet life.”
“Good, that’s very good,” the doctor said. “I can’t promise that you’ll make a full recovery, but at least your mind is intact, and that counts for something.”
“How bad?” Simon asked. The room went quiet for several seconds then, which was all the answer Simon really needed. It was pretty bad.
“Well…” the doctor said finally, “Your injuries are severe. I won’t lie to you about that, but I’m confident that they look worse than they really are, and in a week or perhaps two, we will know much more.”
A week was too long, though. Simon knew that. Bones that had been broken were already set wrong. The right time was now, not later. He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he let the doctor lead the conversation while he talked about herbs that might help and treatments that could speed recovery. Simon didn’t entirely disagree with the suggested course of treatment, but before he could ask questions or argue about anything, he drifted back off to sleep once more. Even staying awake was too hard for him in his present state.
When he woke sometime later, it was lighter, which meant it was daytime, but probably not the next day. The doctor was gone, but the woman was there, doing needlepoint in a chair by his bead. When he stirred, she immediately stirred, but when she went to fetch the doctor again, he said, “No… I want to ask you… not him…”
“Ask me what?” she asked, confused. “I’m just a housemaid; I know nothin’ of medicine like Doctor Nolanth.”
“Not medicine…” Simon breathed. “The volcano… the stone giant…”
“Oh, well, I don’t know much about that either… I—” she started to say.
“Servants talk,” he said with just as much volume as he dared. “What… do they say?”
“Well…” she said, looking at him hesitantly. “They say that an ancient evil woke up in the eruption a fortnight ago and that someone slew it and saved the city. According to some rumors, that hero died, and according to others, he’s recuperating at the palace even now… But I really can’t say.”
“I guess you can’t,” Simon said. The two of them exchanged smiles at the unspoken agreement.
She gave him water this time, and in the light of day, he could see the heavy splints that had been applied to his numb legs. The woman told him a little more gossip now and then. She mentioned that the Queen had tried to visit him twice, but Simon had been unconscious both times. He considered asking her if anyone has seen anyone else that looked like him, but that was too crazy. Honestly, just thinking about it again made him feel crazy, but that was a problem for later.
Later, his nursemaid brought him a thin broth after the doctor checked in on him again, and he ate some even though he wasn’t hungry. A rising fever had robbed him of his appetite. The one thing she wouldn’t do, though, was loosen his bandages so he could see what the problems were.
That had to wait until he was left alone the following night. Then, when he was by himself, he whispered a word of lesser healing to heal his throat and clear his mind. Then he got to work, attacking the bandages on his arm that hurt less with his teeth. Working by moonlight, he slowly unraveled the dense weave to reveal patchy burns and torn flesh where his armor removal had taken the skin with it on his upper arm.
Simon ignored those because none of them looked infected and kept unwinding the thing. His lower arm was much the same, and none of the major bones looked broken. When he finally unwrapped his hand, he found that two of his fingers were splinted, but that wasn’t what concerned him. He held his hand up in the moonlight and saw that all of his fingertips that still remained were blackened from frostbite and probably necrotic. Some of them were missing, though. While he was unconscious, someone had taken the liberty of removing his pinky entirely and the last joint of his ring finger.
He didn’t like it, but they had probably saved his life. “Well, it’s not the worst you’ve been hurt,” he told himself before whispering another word of lesser cure. When he healed his hand, he was careful not to try to restore the missing finger or any of the superficial burns. That would be too suspicious. Instead, he just healed his broken bones and all the damage from the frostbite.
When it was done, it looked and felt right as far as he could tell. Simon didn’t try to take off the splints. Instead, he used his hand and his teeth to get at his other arm. This one had a splint across the forearm and what felt like a fractured radius. He healed that without any trouble, and when he got to his other hand, he was pleased to see he’d only lost a join of his pointer finger, along with three more fractured fingers.
Simon healed all of that, looking at the wreck his arms had become. Then he looked down at his blanket-swaddled body and said, “Do I even want to know?” Part of him argued he could just kill himself and come back the old-fashioned way, but he didn’t listen to it. He wasn’t feeling very suicidal these days unless it was absolutely necessary; he had a lot more work to do.
Ch. 152 - When Magic Isn’t Enough
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.
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.
Comments
Kitty Lee
Edit suggestions: joint not join> he’d only lost a join of his pointer finger; move dialogue tags on> 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?”; him not home> he’d never planned for anyone to actually talk to home about any of this
_Sky_
Ohhhh, ohh man. I get it, I fucking get it. Don't want to spoil it for others, but wow. God damn... she is "The Queen "
Rylie Harris
thanks for another amazing chapter!
True_Jolly_Roger
I wonder why future Simon decided to do it? To push past himself to do something?
Godzilla Gamer
Trepanning everyone favorite medically procedure also I find the her talk of lost cities to be quiet interesting.
Cruz115
So, is she the queen that evil simón talked about? Or is another one?
GrinBean
I wonder if Simon ever thought about just grafting magic blades on his hands wolverine style with the help of a greater word or it'll be rejected by his body (if it was explained before? I don't remember.) Tyftc!
Portalop
commercials to remember exactly how the spin fit together. Cant spin without beyblades fitting together after all
Immortal ZoDD
"how the spin fit together. " -> how the spine fit together. Great chapter. Nice to see Simon not take the easy way out
