Chapter 59: Not Dead Yet
The next week was a blur for Simon, but it wasn’t any fun. He tried to remind himself that the previous week he’d spent mostly unconscious, though, and this was a step up, but it didn’t help. He’d finally tried his hand at healing the skin and the bone of his wound, so he didn’t have to wear the bulky bandage anymore, but it had only elevated the pain and earned him a scornful look from the village healer when she’d inspected his wound later that day.
Now that he knew he could try other words, he was tempted to try greater heal on his mind, but he was also terrified that he would scramble his brain in the process. So instead, he suffered, and he drank since that was the closest this place had to anesthesia. Grann, or Hybissian, as she was called by those that weren’t related to her, which seemed to be half of the village, eventually had her threatened meeting, but it wasn’t as bad as he feared.
She just wanted to know who he killed, if he consorted with the dead and other things like that. Even though he told her nothing but the truth, and she seemed to have some charm, she kept consulting to determine if he was lying. Despite that, she still had trouble believing him.
“Are you sure you aren’t leaving anything out there, Simon?” she demanded eventually, but he’d just laughed.
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I’m on a mission to save the world.”
She’d looked at him sourly for a moment, but then she just shook her head, ending their rather tense discussion by saying, “I know that you’re bad news, and I want you out of our town just as soon as you’re able, but if you deal with neither demons nor the dead I have no idea why you’ve been marked as damned!”
Marked as damned. That was an interesting phrase, and he wanted to follow up on it, but right now, his mind just worked so slowly that he let it pass. She wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he. Not right now, anyway. He was certain he wouldn’t make it through the ice level that came next without recovering, and he still needed to study that grimoire if he could find it.
Studying wasn’t going to happen until his vision and his concentration cleared up anyway, so after he moved out of his deathbed and into a nicer room at the end, he spent a few days just relaxing. The people of the village were a mixture of friendly and fearful, and though he paid for his meals, most nights, the other men at the bar paid for his drinks.
The very first thing he did was check the door that led to the next level. It was the door to someone’s house, but he’d watched it for several days and assumed that they must have died because no one came or went. Eventually, he tried the handle, and instead of finding an empty room, he immediately found a winter wonderland.