Death After Death

Though he enjoyed time to think about this and other topics and frequently used a borrowed hand mirror to ask questions of it from his growing pile of notes, Simon was back on his feet in less than two weeks. There was simply only so much laying in bed he could take. Those first steps were halting, and only across the room to use the chamber pot or to go outside and stand on the balcony, taking in the sea air and the commanding view of the ocean that surrounded the city on three sides.

What it didn’t show him was the volcano, though. Simon was unsure if that was on purpose or a happy accident, but the one direction he most wanted to look in, he couldn’t. He didn’t dwell on it, though. He could tell from the smell of the air and the manner of servants that it wasn’t still erupting. So, if there was no danger, everything else could wait.

The Queen continued to visit him often. It wasn’t daily. She was a busy woman. Still, every two or three days, she would come to his room and bring him a book to read or an expensive piece of fruit to savor. Whether she was attempting to subtly remind him of his place in the pecking order with these luxuries or just giving him rewards worthy of a hero, he couldn’t say. That’s just the way she was. One moment, she was so dignified that she bordered on the formal, and the next, she was just a woman, and the illusion of formality fell apart as she laughed at some joke or beamed when she saw him standing for the first time.

She was a canny woman, though, and even when she was being friendly or even flirtatious, she was still probing him and looking for answers to her questions. What was he really doing here? How did he really slay Brogan? How did Simon know to slay the giant if he didn’t know who that was?

Simon’s protests and memory lapses only went so far, but eventually, he got enough information about the cursed land of Ionia to make up a suitable story. As they talked, she told him of how her great-grandfather, Andus, carved out a vast country from these rocky slopes by killing or sealing away each of the monsters that plagued it. “He stole the north from the harpy queen and sealed away Brogan the burning to build Ionar, among other terrible beasts. For a generation, everything was perfect until the curse.”

Apparently, an oracle had prophesied that his reign would spell only doom for the world and that every time one of his progeny got married, one of the monsters Andus sealed away would return to torment his descendants. It was a crazy story, and Simon was extremely skeptical, at least until the Queen said, “No one was really sure it was true until my mother remarried, almost 50 years after her father’s death. She fell to love, despite all the warnings. That’s when the basilisk returned and destroyed the city of Ozioptin.”

A chill went through Simon at those words. He’d never known the name of the city, but he’d been there before. He’d been there longer than he’d ever been anywhere else. “Ozioptin?” He asked, his mouth suddenly dry. “Could you show me that on a map?”

“A world traveler like you doesn’t know about the city of stone?” she asked with a sad smile. “Did your prophecy not have enough room for two doomed cities?”

“All I know is that if Ionar falls, trade will halt, and wars will start,” Simon said, “So I came to see what I could do to stop that.”

She pursed her lips but said nothing. Instead, she had a servant bring her a map of the kingdom. Simon admired its workmanship immediately, even if he wasn’t sure about some of the choices the author had made distance-wise. Still, it was nice to see Ionia laid out so neatly, pinned between the Raiden Mountains and the Grekan Sea. There were some islands off the shore he hadn’t known about, and there, on the other side of the mountains, was the desert he’d passed through more than once and neatly marked not so far away from the mountain range.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Oziopin. Just seeing that was almost enough to give Simon flashbacks. He’d stared at that range for lifetimes. He could draw it in his sleep. He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he asked, “Why was there a city built in such an out-of-the-way place, in the desert?”

“That would be a good question, except that it wasn’t always desert,” she answered with a shake of her head as she traced out a line on the map with her finger, briefly touching his. “It\'s true that the Wantari wastes have been there forever, but Oziopin was built in the midst of a fertile valley. There was even a beautiful lake there once. It was only when the curse came that the water fled, and the beast appeared. They say that the place will stay that way until someone manages to strike down the monster. That’s a cruel prophecy since no one can beat it, of course, but it’s there just the same.”

“No one can beat it?” Simon asked, suddenly putting a lot less stock in this talk about curses and prophecies since he’d already beaten it a few years in the future. “How do you know someone hasn’t struck it down already.”

“Because no one can,” she answered with a shake of her head. “Every year, another young hero tries, or a merchant caravan that strays too close disappears. The thing is a true monster. ‘No hero of Ionar or any other kingdom of the known world shall ever be able to slay this beast, and it will squat over Ionar until the impossible happens.’”

She spoke, reciting the prophecy from memory and making his blood run cold. She clearly interpreted the thing to mean forever, but as someone who had killed the basilisk, he knew that simply wasn’t so, but he knew something else too. He wasn’t exactly from around here. Suddenly, he very much wanted to meet whoever had prophesied all of this or at least read their other work for clues about what else might happen in the future.

“Who was it that said all these things, and why do you believe them anyway?” Simon asked, rolling up the map. “The future can be whatever it is you want it to be.”

“I only wish that were so,” the Queen sighed, “But the Oracle is never wrong.”

“Never wrong?” he asked skeptically. “Didn’t your evil lava monster wake up recently despite the fact that you hadn’t violated your Grandfather’s prophecy?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But you stopped it before it could doom the city. Clearly, you were always intended to be a part of that destiny, so she still wasn’t wrong.”

“Wasn’t wrong?” he asked, flabbergasted. She’d been wrong in every single life except for this one so far. Before he could protest that, though, she continued.

“Don’t you see? It\'s all part of the plan, and just like you, if we all do our part, then we can make the world a better place, one life at a time.” As the Queen spoke, she took the map back from him, touching his hand, before she rolled it up. She left him then with a lot to think about.

Oracular magic might hint at some new aspect of magic he did not yet understand, and being able to predict what was going to happen would certainly be useful. “More than useful,” he said to himself as he carefully stretched. “It would be OP as fuck.” Still, the idea of fate made him nervous. He didn’t like the idea that whatever he was doing had already been taken into account by someone, somewhere.

Helades had shown practically unlimited power and at least a limited knowledge of what he was mostly likely to do, but he didn’t believe that even she was omnipotent. He was sure he’d surprised her more than once or twice so far. So, while the idea that someone less than her could know such things was unlikely, he couldn’t rule it out entirely.

Simon used words of healing twice more after that. Once to fix the tibia in his left leg that had been set crooked, and again to regrow his big toe when he discovered that the balance problems of losing it were just too big to compensate for. Despite his best efforts, the digit was an ugly, misshapen thing. It looked like a mutated version of a toe as drawn by a kindergartener. The new toe did the job and moved in roughly the way a toe should move, but it dispelled any notions about him replacing his fingers when he left. The only way he’d do that is if he bought some nice gloves and never stopped wearing them. At least he didn’t have to look at his feet as long as he kept his boots on.

Slowly, piece by piece, Simon put himself back together again. He didn’t think he’d be fighting with a sword anytime soon, but he was pretty sure in a few weeks, he wouldn’t need a servant or a wall to lean on if he wanted to move further than a few steps. That didn’t make him any prettier in the mirror, though. The frostbite his armor had inflicted on him had given him gnarly scars across his arms and legs especially. His face was mostly fine, fortunately. It hadn’t been in direct contact with any cold metal. At least not until he’d hit the ground. All in all, he considered this to be a success. He didn’t know how much, though, until they finally brought him his armor.

It was only when he saw how mangled it was that Simon understood how lucky he was to be alive. Cooled magma clung to the outside of several pieces, and the way the leg plates were bent pointed to some very bad breaks. Without magic, Simon would certainly have been dead by now.