Chapter 45: Trust Me
Simon fell back asleep, but when he woke up once more, it was to the smells of cooking meat, and he quickly got dressed and went downstairs. He brought his mace with him, but not because he thought he’d actually need it or anything. Hard experience had just taught him that he should be ready for whatever mindfuck Helades was going to throw at him next.
“I’m sorry that we’re out of eggs,” Freya apologized as she started serving a plate of sausage links and fried potatoes. “We ran out of those a few days ago.” That statement sparked a similar conversation to one he remembered having with her lifetimes ago as she told him about how things had started here and how quickly they’d gotten ugly.
Once they finished eating, she started explaining how everyone had died one at a time, from infighting as much as the zombies, and how at the end, there’d only been a few of them left. By his count, there would have been three left when she started getting vague, and he was tempted to ask what happened to Brenna or Mr. Olggen, but he refrained. Something in her expression said that she absolutely didn’t want to go there.
So he shifted topics and talked about other things. Using scraps of food, Simon explained the geography of the world as he understood it, showing where Slany and Hurag were in the south, and she corrected him slightly, pointing out the coast and a number of other land features that Simon had not yet heard of. It was a useful conversation, and it made Simon wonder if every level was just another part of the same world.
Honestly, it seemed more likely than not at this point between the way the land areas overlapped and some of the things the goddess had said, but he didn’t mention any of that to Freya. He just waited for her to stop talking about how important the black bridge was for local trade routes and how it was the only year-round crossing for the Diener River for fifty miles in either direction before he turned the topic a little further towards where he wanted it.
“If we could escape tomorrow, where would you like to go?” Simon asked, catching her off guard.
“But we can’t escape, can we?” she pushed back, confused.
“Maybe not this minute, but I hope we’ll find a way out soon,” Simon answered, trying to stay upbeat, “and when that happens, we’ll need a goal. Do you have any family nearby we could stay with or…”
“All my family died here in Schwarzenbruck,” she said, as her eyes started to tear up. “At least, I think they did. I’ll probably never know.”