Chapter 15: Words of Power
Death by suffocation was on Simon’s top five worst deaths so far. It had all the helpless terror of drowning combined with the pain and horror of having his face melted off. When he woke up in his bed though, he was more frustrated than horrified. How the hell was he supposed to kill something that couldn’t be stabbed and barely had a body to fight?
“Magic,” he said, answering his own question as he looked up at the ceiling of his little cabin. The answer was obvious. Magic was always the right tool to defeat an amorphous monster like this. Anything with fire really. He doubted that a torch would do enough damage, at least not before the slime or the blob or whatever that thing was had swallowed him whole again, but a spell like the one that the goblin used to burn him out of house and home in an instant? That would be just about right.
Now all he had to do was figure out how to cast that spell, and he’d be golden.
It wasn’t going to be that easy of course, but Simon took a moment to appreciate just how smart he was. It was because of levels like this that so many of the millions of people that were trapped in this cursed place were stuck here. Some of those people probably never even figured out there was magic here at all, and it must have taken hundreds of thousands of others years to put it together. Here he was solving the level’s twist almost as soon as he reached it. He was dying a lot more than he thought he was going to. He did have to admit that to himself, but he learned something with almost every death now, and sometime soon he’d be clearing multiple levels with every death rather than multiple deaths with every level as he’d been up until now.
Simon added just enough wood to the fire to make sure it would stay smoldering until this evening and opened the shutters to let the heat out. After that he had a little of the food, and a little of the wine as a sort of celebration of the string of small victories he’d just had, and then he decided to take a nap. He couldn’t really carry out his plan until this evening, so he might as well enjoy a well-earned break and beat the midday heat. His final thoughts before drifting off to sleep were about how happy he’d be when he learned how to cast that goblin’s spell. He wouldn’t even need to learn how to light a fire; he’d be able to create it with nothing but a word.
. . .
Several hours later he woke and started to get ready. He still had hours before sunset, and he doubted he’d see the goblins until then, but for once in his life he had to be early. Once they were out of their lair, there was no telling how they would ambush him, but as long as he was keeping watch on the cave entrance, he didn’t see how they could sneak up behind him.
Simon geared up, and then looked long and hard at the bow on his wall, wishing he knew how to use the thing before he decided to leave it here. It would have been a hundred times better than the crossbow for tonight, but he would have to make do until he found time to practice with the longbow. Once that decision was made, he was off, tramping through the grass the way he remembered going last time to find what was almost certainly the goblin cave.
He made it almost all the way to the cave without getting lost. One quick backtrack later though, and he was hiding behind a boulder with a clear view of the cave itself. From this distance it didn’t smell so bad, so he polished off the bread and cheese without losing his appetite while he kept his eyes on the hole and his crossbow braced on the rock. It was sort of like a stakeout he thought, but with goblins instead of criminals.