Death After Death

Almost a month after his fall, Simon was walking around outside. Mostly, he limited himself to short walks in the garden, but in time, he found he could wander a bit around the upper city, too. He was more than aware of the eyes on him then, though that seemed to be the scars more than anything.

The first time a child pointed at him and said, “Look, mommy, a leper,” he decided there and then that he would get some new shirts made to cover the scarring as much as possible and that he would get some gloves to hide the bits of fingers he’d lost.

The Queen was happy to help him with that, and soon thereafter, tailors had arrived to make him clothes finer than he’d worn in several lifetimes. However, it was only when he noticed how the otherwise businesslike tailor shuddered when he touched Simon that he realized that he might be a little more hideous than he thought.

That night, he stared long and hard at himself in the mirror, trying to decide if he should try to ameliorate the scars, but he decided against it. They didn’t really bother him, and when he got some clothes that had been cut with this problem in mind, they wouldn’t bother anyone else, either. After all, it wasn’t like anyone was going to see him naked any time soon.

When Simon was finally healthy enough, he made the long walk up to where he’d almost died with the help of a walking stick. He shouldn’t have done it. He was still too weak for a mile walk, but he couldn’t help it. It was something I needed to see.

When he got close enough to see the giant statue, he thought for a moment that someone was carving something to commemorate the occasion. It took him far too long to realize that what he was seeing wasn’t a statue. It was the remains of the monster he’d been fighting, frozen in stone.

Several thoughts hit Simon at once after that. The first one was that the thing wasn’t dead. It was just frozen in a statue like he’d once been so long ago. The second realization dispelled any sympathy from the first one, though.

The statue was on one knee, with its hands raised in the air and its two fists balled together like it was about to deliver the final blow. In that moment Simon could see what he must have looked like. There he was, lying where the ossified lava monster had been about to strike, broken beyond any measure. He could see his battered armor and the way it failed to hide the unnatural way his legs were bent. He could even see the fog of cold rising from him while the still-molten Brogan shimmered with heat.

The monster was going to end me, but it ran out of steam before it could, he thought to himself as he returned to his senses and sat back down before he fell over.

He stayed there for some time, looking at how little separated life and death. “I never would have known if it had succeeded,” he thought with a shrug, trying to put everything in its proper context. “I would have just come back and tried all of this again. So, it's not like any of this matters.”

It did, though. It mattered to him. He could die, and if he did, he’d come back, but the amount of deaths he was wracking up was starting to weigh on him. He stayed there long enough to think about how hard it was going to be to get back to the palace. Fortunately, someone had thought of that and sent a curtained palanquin to retrieve him. When he asked the guard in charge about that, he just said, “The Queen decided that you were in no fit shape to return under your own power but that you were stubborn enough that you needed to find that out for yourself.”

Simon grinned at that, but he did not disagree. He spent the next two days in bed as a result of his expedition, but every day after that was easier. There were only a couple occasions where he was tempted to find something to drain the life force from something to speed the process, but he resisted. Instead, he took up drinking once more, but only for the pain. He wasn’t much of a fan of white wine when he started, but by the end of the twice or thrice-weekly benders, he had to admit it wasn’t so bad.

Instead, he stopped and smelled the roses, literally and figuratively. The palace made it clear he was welcome to stay as an honored guest for as long as he liked, and even if some of the nobility were not pleased to see a foreigner held in such high esteem, they said nothing to him at least.

So, Simon drew, read voraciously through the palace library, and worked on his map. The resources they had for that were impressive but entirely understandable, given their position as a trade hub.

Even more than the maps, though, he found himself spending more and more time amongst the books. This was the first opportunity Simon had really had a chance to read for pleasure since his life back on Earth, and he basked in it. At first, he tried to pick books and scrolls that seemed the most practical. He looked for history books and treatises on geography to help tie the world together better in his mind. Eventually, though, he grew tired of those and focused on books for pleasure. He read children’s stories and books of epic poetry. He read anything that interested him while he waited for his body to heal, and he enjoyed it immensely.

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Truthfully, aside from the grimoire he’d spent weeks studying once upon a time, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d read anything this substantial since a binge through the walkthroughs of a particularly challenging game he’d had trouble with when it came out.

I probably haven’t read for fun since I was a boy, he reflected, wondering why he’d ever given it up.

Some days, the doctor would check on him, though those visits were less and less frequent now. He spent more time bragging about how he’d saved Simon’s life than he did trying to understand why Simon had survived, which was good because digging too deeply in that regard would not end well for him.

Other days, the Queen made an appearance. She asked most regularly about his choice in books and what he had learned. She no longer asked how he was doing, though. Instead, she simply chatted with him between her official duties.

Simon was honored, but whenever he tried to protest, she simply said, “Nonsense, for the hero of Ionar, this is the very least I can do.”

“Well, if I’m such a hero, then why does no one mention what happened,” he shot back one day when he grew tired of the statement.

That gave her pause before she said, “Simon, why do you think it’s a good idea that the less anyone knows about what really happened, the better?”

“Because it might cause a panic?” he guessed, feeling certain he knew the real answer.

“It might. Anyone might walk up to the foot of the volcano and see the statue you left there, though,” she answered with a shrug. “The rumors have spread far and wide by now, and the shrine to placate it is heavy with flowers and other offerings. I don’t think there’s any hiding that something supernatural happened; I just think maybe who did it might be a secret better left forgotten.”

“Because it would take tremendous strength to defeat such a foe,” he hazarded, trying again.

This made her laugh. “Simon, do you know what temperature your armor was when the first guards found your broken body?”

Simon’s heart sank. All this time, he thought he was hiding the important things, but she knew the truth already. “I imagine it was quite cold,” he said finally.

“It was,” she agreed. “It was colder than ice. That’s quite something under normal circumstances, but when there’s still smoldering lava clinging to it… well, I think that’s quite remarkable.”

“I can explain,” he started to answer, but she ignored him.

“My Vizer says that the armor is quite well made and that he doesn’t recognize all of the runes that were used to make it,” she continued. “He recommended that we should kill you in your sleep just in case that someone was you. Was it?”

“It was,” Simon answered, tired of lying to the people who had saved his life. “I put that armor together for the express purpose of this eruption.”

“Impressive,” she answered, leaning forward to rest her chin on her interwoven hands. “But how precisely did you know that Mount Karkosia was going to erupt?”

“That’s more complicated,” Simon said after only a short pause.

“More complicated than making magical armor or fighting a monster of legend?” she answered with a smirk. “More complicated than knowing several terrible words or confessing all of these facts to the Queen of Ionar? You are a strange man, Mister Simon. I look forward to finding out the rest of your story.”

“I can leave if you prefer,” he said finally.

“Why would I want you to leave after I’ve spent so much time hiding your secret for you?” she asked.

“Well, your Vizer—” he started to say.

“Refuses to meet with you, but he has promised me that he will strike you down the moment you even think of using magic. Is that understood?” she asked, suddenly serious.

“It is,” Simon said, suppressing a grin. He’d used half a dozen spells since he’d been here, and the man hadn’t done a thing to him, which meant he had no better way of detecting magic than Simon did: watching it happen.

“Good, then there’s no reason for you to leave any time soon,” she smiled.

“I do plan to leave when I’ve recovered, though,” he told her. “There’s more I need to do.”

“More volcanoes to fight, are there?” she asked, with glittering eyes.

“Next on my list is a dragon, actually,” he said with a smile that made it impossible to tell that he was being serious.

“A dragon?” she laughed again. “Now that is impressive. If you told me you’d slain a dragon before, I’d almost believe it.”

“I haven’t,” he admitted. “A wyvern, a troll, a ba… a batch of goblins like you wouldn’t believe, and a few other things. ”

He cringed as he realized he’d almost told her about the basilisk. That had been too close.

“Oh, I look forward to these stories,” she answered, leaning back and stretching just enough to show off her figure before she rose. “But if you try to crib from any of these books and pass them off as your own exploits, I’ll know. I’ve read nearly every book in here.”

“Nearly?” he asked.

“Well, except for the boring ones,” she agreed. They both laughed at that.

The Queen left him then, but he continued to smile long after she was gone. It was the first time in a long time that someone had gotten a hint of who he really was without shying away at all. He liked that and hoped that would continue if he worked up the nerve to tell her more.