Chapter 42: Ripple Effects
Simon brought a bag of goblin heads back as proof of their victory, and after he told the mostly truthful tale to the Baron about how his heir had charged into the action bellowing a battle cry and cutting down green skins, the man threatened to have one of the heads bronzed and put on the wall of his study. The Baron’s wife, Arys, talked him out of it, of course, but Simon was invited to a feast held in Gregor’s honor when the mine was reopened, where the lord drunkenly recounted the tale.
“There they were,” he told the other guests feigning rapt attention like they hadn’t heard all this before. “Surround by those damn goblins pouring up from the mouth of hell when my eldest son ran screaming into their midst!”
Simon successfully avoided laughing at that and had a decent night answering the silly questions of silly people that were all somehow more important than him while he sampled a variety of halfway-decent wines. He wasn’t going to let people like that bother him, though. Instead, he spent the following days berating himself for how silly it had been that he’d worried about those stupid dreams whenever he wasn’t doing anything more interesting.
After all - there’d only been five goblins down there, not some kind of goblin city. At least that’s what he thought until a few days later when he chatted with one of the men who’d worked on collapsing that entrance so that goblins wouldn’t be a problem again in the future. Apparently, there’d been dozens of the little pests just a little further in that had perished from smoke inhalation. Though he pretended like he’d always known that was the likely outcome, Simon wondered if that made him more or less crazy for wondering if his dreams were somehow true.
The Baron was true to his word and gave Simon the run of a cottage not far from the Baron’s manor for as long as he desired it, on condition that he be available for the needs of his household on occasion. Simon didn’t have a problem with that, though, when he found out that another tenant family had been evicted to make room for him, Simon did have a bit of a problem with that. No one else seemed to care, so eventually, he stopped too and focused on living something like a normal life for the first time in a long time.
He still paid a few coppers to eat and drink at the inn almost every night, but that was only because he had no idea how to cook over an open flame. Letting a soup boil in a cauldron was one thing. He tried that a couple times, but getting all the right fresh herbs and then keeping the fire at the same level for hours was a pain, and after trying it a few times just to prove to himself that he could, he became a regular at the inn instead. In the games he was used to playing, it was so easy: you picked up anything clickable, clicked the button to combine the items, and then had armor or a nice meal.
Simon spent a week trying to tan a hide before he gave up. Not only was it difficult to do, but the way you used the creature’s brains in the tanning process was also more than a little bit disgusting. In fact - the more he tried to learn about medieval life, the more disgusting he found it. Chamber pots, half-rotten food, and no real medicine to speak of made for a pretty awful life, but at least with his stash of gold, he didn’t have to spend all day laboring in the fields like his fellow man.
He frequently found himself sparring with the man’s sons, using wooden swords for lack of anything better to do. He’d noticed the last few weeks that if he didn’t keep himself busy, he tended to stop moving and just exist inside his own head in a way that sometimes felt disturbingly close to being a statue once more. He only noticed it when he was so still outside one day that a bird landed on him like he was some kind of Disney princess. Sometimes it was hard to snap out of that as he relived his traumas and berated himself for everything he could have done better and every trap of Helades that he should have seen coming.
So, he frequently resorted to swordplay with the boys and sometimes even the household guard to sharpen his skills and provide a little entertainment. Though even the Baron’s youngest was more skilled than Simon on a technical level since they’d spent their young lives drilling with actual instructors, they were able to do some interesting things with feints and reposts that he had trouble dealing with, but even with those tricks they seldom beat him. Simon had more than just raw strength on his side, even though the daily workouts were having a real impact on his body. He also had more experience against a real opponent and could spot openings better than anyone else in the sparring yard.