Death After Death

Eventually, that was the only task that was engrossing enough to keep his angry thoughts about Kell at bay. He traced and retraced the way the runes fit together from his mirror notes on clean sheets of paper until he finally understood the way they would have looked without all of the distortion from the magics of hell straining against the summoning circle.

It was only once he’d done that that he understood a number of things. The first was that the reason some of the symbols hadn’t made sense to him was because they were twisted and mirrored. Once everything was in the proper scale and orientation, the whole thing felt a lot less dizzying.

The second was that he’d been using Dnarth completely wrong. Until now, distance had meant simply hitting something far away from him. That was all he used it for, but the summoning circle used it almost like teleportation. No, he corrected himself. It was more complex than that. It was like translocation - like that old show with the stargate he’d only seen a few episodes of. Simon had no idea how it worked or targeted its location or whatever, but he desperately wanted to. The world was a big place, and being able to move between far-flung points at a pace somewhat faster than walking would be a huge deal.

Even that idea, as big as it was, wasn’t as important as his third revelation, though. After months of nighttime study, after everyone else finally went to bed and he was left alone with the sick and the dying, he finally figured out which part of the structure he needed to strike out to make the whole thing collapse in on itself.

In a way, the last two revelations were linked because, at first, every attempt to defuse the circle would have led to the outer boundary collapsing first, letting hell into the world, which was exactly what he didn’t want. However, if he attacked the third layer of runes first and canceled out the line that connected the flow of power to the distant rune, then the spell would collapse inward, as the circle suddenly found itself surrounding nothing, and hell faded away with the barrier still intact.

Of course, he also realized he understood the whole thing well enough that he could summon demons on pretty much any floor now. He had no desire to do that, of course, and he still didn’t understand exactly what all the connecting pieces and the parts that might have been numbers or designators did, but he was sure he could copy them well enough to reproduce them. He’d been very careful in his copies to leave gaps in the lines lest he do exactly that.

Of course, Simon burned all of this research after he showed it to the mirror. The very last thing he wanted to do, besides accidentally opening up a portal to hell on something as fragile as paper, was to let anyone else see what he was doing. Not only would that stir all sorts of uncomfortable allegations, but it would release dangerous knowledge in the world that would have entirely unpredictable effects.

Truthfully, Simon would have preferred to keep all of his research in the mirror at all times. That way, no one but him could access it. However, the interface was pretty jank, and the resolution wasn’t so good. He felt like he was writing on an old drawing tablet or something, so he preferred to work on paper before saving it into the mirror.

Life might have gone on like that for months or years longer, even after the patients had started to slacken, and his hospital sat half-empty most weeks had someone not informed him that the Sea Seraph was back in port. Just like that, Simon realized it had been more than a year as he lost himself in the depths of his various studies. All this time, he’d told himself he was just waiting for them to come back while he pursued experiments in medicine, geography, and his words of power.

It had become more than that, though he couldn’t point to exactly when it had changed. At some point, he’d given up on the idea of pursuing his current run any further, and he’d started a new life. Now, he was loath to give that up.

Still, since it was here, he went down to the harbor and chatted with the quartermaster and some of the other crew, whom he still remembered. He told them about quelling the epidemic, and they told him stories of their most recent voyages. There wasn’t anything about them that stood out to him, though. They’d taken the long way back to Targis on Colloum in the lands across the sea, then gone north before coming back across as they always did. This time, they had a close call with pirates, apparently instead of refugees, but the captain had been able to outrun the bastards in a harrowing chase before a storm had finally separated the ships.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

All told it made for an interesting story, but there was no part of it that made him think, oh, that’s why the ship needed to be saved. They hadn’t even killed the pirates. In the end, he’d gone back to his mostly empty hospital in a daze, unsure what to do next. He was in no hurry to be burned alive by Dragonfire after all, and he was fairly sure that was the only thing awaiting him if he tried to speed-run things.

The next morning, he told the few devotees who still clung to him despite the city returning to normal, “I’m going north in search of new challenges.”

“But why?” one of his apprentices asked. “Abresse still has many sick, even without the plague. There’s more to do here.”

“And you will tend to them, I’m sure,” Simon smiled. “I’ve taught you well, after all.”

“But will you do?” Another asked.

“I will heal the sick as I find them and work on my maps where I can,” Simon smiled.

He’d made no secret of the maps he was working on from the testimony of sailors. In fact, he’d often used that as cover for the research he was doing on the binding circle from level 13, so they were well aware of his obsession in that department.

Simon had spent a year here, and another five to ten years of life on magic at least, so he was fairly sure that he was approaching middle age. This wasn’t the first time he’d approached that threshold, but it was probably the first time he really felt like an adult, or worse, an elder, as he looked out on all these people who were so much younger than him.

They held a feast to celebrate his decision once it was clear that it couldn’t be changed, and more than a few nobles attended to praise him for all his good works. They should, he thought with a wry smile. I saved half of them from the weeping. There was some polite roasting, but on the whole, it was a celebration, and he ate better than he had in lifetimes. It was almost enough to make him miss the good life instead of the ascetic he’d become over the last year.

He enjoyed the night of praise and considered it a more than adequaite reward for all his hard work. Simon left most of the money he’d managed to earn in that time with the men he appointed to keep running the hospital in his absence. He told them he’d be back in three years. “Perhaps sooner,” he said. “We shall see how long it takes to get to Darndelle, and past that, to Liepzen perhaps. We shall see where the road takes me.”

That was a lie, though. He only said it to ensure they remained diligent longer than they otherwise might if they thought no one would ever check up on them. While he had no doubt that some of the men who had served under him did so to help people, he was sure that several of them saw his tutelage as a stepping stone to a position of prestige serving the well-heeled citizens of the city and that they would find a way to spend his hospital’s capital reserves all too quickly if they thought there would be no one to explain themselves to.

Once that was done, Simon left quietly one night out the western gate with no fanfare. The last thing he wanted was people begging to follow him to the ends of the earth, or whatever it was this world was called. “Am I going to have to invent a name for that, too, or do they already have one?” Simon wondered. He wasn’t sure.

He supposed he was going to have to find a library or something and find out. Only he hadn’t actually seen one of those yet. A few nobles had libraries, of course, but in terms of public learning institutions, they hadn’t seemed to have been invented yet. Simon wondered if maybe he should add that to his to-do list as well but decided that was probably too much.

He resolved to focus on simple things first, like finishing his map as he put one foot in front of the other, but with only his mule for company as he circled north and the miles drifted by, it was hard not to let his mind wander. After all, a world with magic was full of limitless possibilities, and he could do anything if he wanted to.

Simon spent almost two weeks ploding north before he reached Mietere. It was a city he’d heard of before, though he couldn’t quite recall where, even if he’d never been there, and was little more than a farming hub and a county seat. Politically it seemed to belong to Darndelle, and marked the furthest eastern point of that tiny kingdom.

Geographically, that was one of the questions that puzzled him most. He had a pretty good idea of where most cities were in relation to each other at this point, but where they connected and how they aligned with each other. That was harder. Even what language they spoke was often mysterious to him.

Sometimes it wasn’t the big cities he was looking for, though. Two days out of Mietere he found the town of Esmiran, which was where he’d almost been drowned in the well by that crazy cult. He lingered there for almost a week trying to learn about the men in white, but found nothing which meant that they either liked to keep a low profile, or that they hadn’t come into existence yet; he wasn’t sure which was more ominous.

A few days after he left that spot, he found the valley where he’d faced the black swarmers, and a week later, he finally reached Darndelle. This level was several years past the one where he’d solved the issue with the Blackheart in the graveyard. As a result, he was able to spend several minutes looking at a fine statue of him that the people of the city had built, which was dedicated to Simon the Witchhunter. It was a surreal experience, and once he got over the shock, he left before anyone could notice just how much he looked like it.