Chapter 43: Familiar Faces
Simon’s most common reaction to the pain and confusion accompanying death whenever he died was anger and frustration. Generally, he was annoyed at whatever cheap trick had been used to kill him, or he was pissed off at Helades for planning it this way just to make him suffer. The next most common was fear that something even worse than death might somehow be inflicted on him again. This time he felt neither, though.
Instead, he felt only acceptance as he lay there staring at the ceiling, trying to parse the reaction he’d seen on the faces of the men who’d killed him. Gregor had seemed sad, of course, and Simon was pleased that at least one person had decided to give him the benefit of the doubt for once in his life.
“Especially since I was, you know, saving your family from a fucking army,” he said sarcastically to no one in particular.
Martem and Viktor were people he thought he knew, though. Simon understood that superstitious villagers might not like magic. What he didn’t understand was why they had sprung on him so viscerally like that. If they’d wanted to exile or banish him after the fighting was done because they thought it was witchcraft, he could see that, but to kill him for trying to keep them alive was bullshit, and he kind of hoped they were wiped out because of it.
Well, he wanted to hope that, but he couldn’t quite make himself think something so awful, and as he got up and stretched, he hoped that the Baron’s family managed to escape, or at least if they died, he hoped that it was a clean death. They’d been good to him, after all.
Good enough to go back and try to save them again, though? He wasn’t so sure about that.
Simon reached for the wine bottle and took a long swig, noting that he’d developed enough of a palette for it that he noticed just how much it sucked compared to the vintages he was used to at the Baron’s table. That didn’t stop him from drinking it, though, as he pondered what to do next.
“If I go back, whatever I build is just going to get destroyed by the war again,” he told himself as he considered the problem. He had two options: he could try to stop the war somehow, or he could try going further away this time.
Simon had no idea how to go about stopping the war, though. Was he supposed to just assassinate some duke so that the line of succession was clearer? That might help, but it might make things worse, too, and there was no guarantee that he would survive such an attempt long enough to enjoy his newfound peace anyway. Maybe if he wandered far enough, he could find somewhere so distant and insignificant that it wouldn’t be affected.