Chapter 66: A Single Moment
The swamp was gone, just like the forest had been before. Simon could see that, but he had no idea why that was the case. He definitely wasn’t remembering it too well. If you had told him that last time it had been swamp then plague city, he might have believed it - but it had definitely been around here somewhere.
He rubbed his side as he remembered getting stabbed with that wooden spear and recalled how disgusting it had been to heal the wound, knowing that there were probably still splinters in it. Knowing what he knew now, that would have almost certainly become a fatal infection in time. After all, back then, he’d only tried to close the wound. He hadn’t thought about how he’d have to make the muscles knit back together or remove the splinters and filth that would have inevitably caused an abscess to form.
Simon would never say that his death right after that to the basilisk was a good thing, but it had likely spared him a lot of suffering in that sense. If he’d gotten blood poisoning and died of a fever while cursing Helades name, he might never have tried healing magic again, though, and that would have been a serious mistake.
The magic of this world was a lot more manual than it should be, in his opinion, but there was no denying that it was useful. He just didn’t see how a healing spell would be useful to the medieval mind for anything but the most minor of wounds. Why should magic require advanced anatomical knowledge? Was there an MRI spell he could learn to actually diagnose wounds?
He chuckled to himself as he studied the sand-blown ruins on the other side of the portal, “The better question is, why the hell doesn’t everyone and their brother know these spells already? I think it would be kind of hard to keep a secret like this.”
He was just stalling, though. He knew that. He had no trouble facing death, even horrible splintery death at the hands of the lizardmen. The threat of being a statue, though… that was so much worse.
He took a deep breath to calm himself as he realized he was shaking. He couldn’t handle another century as a statue. He just couldn’t. This time, it would be worse. He’d be trapped in that stone with nothing but the memory of his dead wife and child until the sorrow devoured him whole.
Just contemplating that horrible fate was enough to allow the deep sorrow that he’d been repressing for… how long had it been? Weeks? Months?
Not long enough, he decided as he pulled his bow from his back and stepped through the portal, letting the fear wash over him. Purpose had been the only thing that kept him going for a while now. Perhaps he’d only bothered to defend the burning village because he needed that fear of death to keep his demons at bay.