Death After Death

A moment ago, Simon had been in Montain, but now he was back in Brin, not that the spots looked all that dissimilar from here. As he stood up and dusted himself off, he looked around. Behind him, the portal was fading, revealing just a little more carnage.

Simon was surrounded by a smoldering village that had recently been burned to the ground by one of the rampaging centaur clans. That much hadn’t changed, at least. As he turned in a circle, he noted that it looked exactly as he’d remembered it, and that there was no threat here.

While he turned, he tried to recall where the portal to the next level was, which took a moment. He actually had to walk over to the well and draw a bucket of water to ask the mirror. When he found the doorway, he started looking at the bodies between here and there.

When he’d first come to this level with the werewolf, he hadn’t considered that the location of the exit told him a great deal about what he was supposed to be doing. “Merlin? Murphy?” Simon muttered, trying to remember the hairy man’s name. He hadn’t thought of him in years, but being back in this charred village brought back the vivid image of trying to find the naked man some clothes after he’d transformed into a human once more.

He searched every corpse between the entrance and exit for any signs of life. He didn’t need to finish this level. He’d left level 9 open for a reason, and that was that it was a little over a decade from level zero. This was level 27, and it was half a century from the beginning. Leaving it open just in case was a fine strategy.

Before he could make that call, though, he needed to figure out who he was supposed to save. He’d been willing to let that poor messenger take one for the team again. Simon had saved him many times before, but never whoever he was supposed to save here. He was sure of that much; he just wasn’t sure who the person was supposed to be, which was a problem since this was the site of a massacre.

After a couple of minutes of checking corpses for signs of life, he stooped over a dark puddle of shiny blood and asked the mirror if he’d made any notes on the subject. ‘One journal entry suggests a family, in a house,’ the mirror answered in blurred blue letters. That wasn’t a lot of information, but it was enough. There were many fewer houses between here and there worthy of the name.

Simon went from one to the next, and in a few minutes, he found what he was looking for. There, he found the charred corpse of a father wrapped around the bled-out corpse of a woman who was cradling a small child. Of the three of them, only the little girl still had a pulse. She also had an arrow wound in her abdomen that wasn’t yet showing signs of infection.

“Yeah, this can’t wait,” he sighed as he set down his bag and pulled out his wand.

The right thing to do would be to fetch water, boil it, find herbs, and do a little surgery. In a less dire situation, he might have. He could use some healer practice after a few lives, but in this case, he’d sacrifice a few days of life and a few more of blurry vision for a kid.

He picked up her featherlight form and moved her over to the shadow of the well, then he made a small incision to pull the arrow free. Simon had seen the barbed, red fletched arrows in a dozen lives and knew they were nasty business. So, he didn’t try to pull it out or push it through.

Even unconscious, his patient moved and groaned, trying to escape the pain he was inflicting on her. That made Simon flinch, but it didn’t make him stop. She was a fragile thing, and any amount of blood was a lot for her to lose.

Still, he took his time. He didn’t have a wand with a word of curing carved into it, so if he left anything behind in the wound, the girl would die in weeks instead of days. It was bloody work, but after half a minute, he’d pulled the arrow free, checked for debris, and pinched the wound closed again.

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After that, all he had to do was visualize the delicate organs of her body mending back together, and the skin growing shut. With a minor word, it was a slow process, but within a few minutes, she had an angry red scar where her mortal wound had been, and he was washing off his bloody hands.

It was only when all of that was done that he asked himself, “The question is, are you important to Helades’ plans, or is it the grandchildren you’d never have if you died here today?” Simon didn’t have an answer to that, and he knew that the girl didn’t either. Still, he made a note that he should probably check up on her in a few years and try to figure that out.

“I guess that means I have to take her somewhere safe,” he said, sighing.

He’d planned to tag this level and move right on to the next one, but that would have only been possible with someone who could take care of herself. With a ten-year-old, he was going to need to find someplace safe for her to stay, which meant a lot of walking. His first thought was Darndelle, but only because he didn’t want to go back to Crowvar. It was at least twice as far, though, and he had no supplies.

“Well, maybe Crowvar will be better off without the Raithwaite clan,” he mused as he drank his fill.

By the time he was done, the little girl still hadn’t awoken, so he found enough canvas rags and two decent poles and crafted a travois he could drag behind him as a stretcher until she woke. He also found a couple of coin purses with some copper and silver in them when he searched for those supplies, which was good, because he didn’t have much of the Necromancer’s funds left. He hadn’t planned to do much besides cut his way deeper into the pit, so he was close to flat broke.

The girl was so light that he probably could have carried her, but a stretcher was probably a better choice in case she had any injuries he missed. They were going nearly fifty miles, after all.

That took longer than he would have thought. Simon expected the girl to wake up by sunset, or at least during the night, but by midday, she was still unconscious. Am I missing something here? he wondered as he hit the trail again and continued onward.

Technically, if he was supposed to save her, and the level’s exit was right there, he was supposed to, what, leave her to be rescued? That didn’t sit right with him. Plus, if he left her there to be found, he had no way of knowing where she’d end up, preventing him from analyzing the impact of his rescue in future runs.

“Deviate far enough, and you won’t even solve the level,” he reminded himself. That was true, but he didn’t really care if this level was locked in or not; he just wanted to save the girl. He could always do that again if needed.

Partway through the second day, the girl finally stirred, and when she started to moan fitfully and struggle slightly, Simon stopped and smiled down at her. “Well, good morning,” he answered amiably. “Who might you be?”

“I’m…” she paused a moment as if the question confused her. “I’m Nara.” That statement was immediately followed by another demand. This one was more forceful, as she must have realized he wasn’t her dad, or anyone else he knew. “Where’s mommy?”

“Well Nara, I’m Simon,” he said, doing his best to be as non-threatening as possible as he laid the handles of his travois around and moved to where she could see him. “And it’s nice to meet you. What’s the last thing you rem—”

“I want my mommy!” the girl interrupted, struggling at the rope that secured her to the makeshift stretcher under her armpits. “Where are you taking me? Where’s mommy, and daddy?!”

He didn’t untie her, mostly because she was already a scared rabbit. Instead, he let her fumble with the knot herself. It wasn’t tight. He tried to tell her that her parents were dead. He wanted to, but the best he could manage was, “You got separated in the attack, that’s all. I’m just bringing you to the closest city where they can find you again, that’s all.”

It was a lie he’d have to unravel later, but looking at her tear-filled eyes in that moment hit his heart in just the right spot.

“You-you promise?” she sniffed.

Simon nodded. “I promise to get you to Crowvar safe and sound,” he answered, sidestepping her question.

That mollified her, but only a little, and she insisted on walking after that, at least for thirty minutes or so. After that, she was too tired to keep going, but that didn’t bother him. He just ditched his stretcher and gave her a ride on his shoulders until she felt like walking again.