Death After Death-Chapter 345 - A Familiar Bed

The first clue that Simon was waking up in Rivenwood and not his cabin was the pain. It was worst in his head, but as soon as he shifted slightly, the pain that came from his arm consumed all of that and more, making the breath catch in his throat. For a moment, he willed his heart to stop beating so that the lack of motion would quell the pain that blazed brightly in his arm.

He instantly brought the word of healing to his lips but dismissed it almost as quickly. Not happening, he admonished himself. That’s what whiskey is for.

Very careful not to jostle his arm, Simon opened his eyes to find a room he’d been in before. Well, his eye at least. His left eye was swollen shut, so that he could only barely see some blurred light from it. His other eye worked just fine, letting him see that he wasn’t the only one in bad shape.

He was in one of the beds, but there were many others lying on pallets or rugs on the floor. Some had bloody bandages wrapped around stab wounds or nasty burns, while others were cradling the bandaged stumps of missing hands or limbs.

It was an ugly scene, and the fact that he’d seen similar moments across a dozen lives didn’t make those sights or smells any easier to bear. Simon felt a twinge of guilt. He had the magic to heal these people, and he wasn’t going to use it. As a result, people would die.

He didn’t dwell on it. I’ve done what I can, and I’ll do more when I can, he told himself as he looked around the room.

As he did so, he was careful not to jostle his arm, which was only being held together by a few sticks and some wrapped bandages. That would make any further motion impossible without a proper cast, he realized, but even if his arm had been whole, he wasn’t sure that he would have been able to stand. The simple act of turning his head a few degrees left the world spinning.

Skull fracture, probably, he told himself, mentally adding together his injuries. Combined, it would be months before he could do more than putter around or walk. At least it would have been, without his dagger.

That thing was probably the reason he was still breathing at all, he realized as the woman who was acting as a triage nurse came over to him when she noticed he was moving. His unconscious body had lain beneath that orc for seconds or minutes, drinking in what it could from the dying brute, offsetting who knew what brain bleeds the whole time.

As soon as I’m strong enough to get out of here, I’ll buy myself a cow and fix the worst of it in an afternoon, he told himself. That was about as close to blood sacrifice as he’d ever planned before, but it was what it was, and pragmatic didn’t mean evil.

“Can you hear me?” the young woman asked.

He could, but only through one ear. His left ear was just a dull ringing that likely meant a ruptured eardrum. He wasn’t even sure if that was fixable without a word of power, but for now, that didn’t matter. He just nodded slightly as he looked at her familiar smile. It had been about a hundred years too long for him to remember her name, but he knew that this was the second time she was taking care of him in such a bad way.

“That’s good,” she said, sounding relieved. “Very good. I don’t know who you are, but.. Let’s just say we were lucky you were here last night, and you’re lucky to be here still.”

Last time I was here, I thought it would be dangerous to heal my brain directly, and this time I’m in the same situation because I’m trying not to use magic, he berated himself. How ironic.

Simon didn’t laugh or even smile at those thoughts because it would hurt too much. Instead, he asked, “What happened here? How bad is it?” His words were croaked more than said, but apparently she didn’t understand what he meant, because she told him about his condition, and not the condition of the town.

“Well, you were barely breathing when we found you,” she admitted before running down his list of dire injuries. He noted that she missed his broken ribs. “But don’t you worry. Grann is tending to other patients just now, but when she gets here, I’m sure she’ll know just what to do.”

“Not me,” Simon coughed, wracking his body with another wave of agony from the violent motion. “This place. Rivenwood. How bad?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Oh,” she said, startled that he seemed to care more about the place than himself. “It’s… well, it’s not fine, but it could have been much worse. Two dozen dead… another two dozen wounded. The count’s men arrived this morning too late to do anything to help, of course, but they should at least make sure there’s no other fighting soon. You can rest easy. You’re safe here.”

She might have said more, but another patient started to thrash violently, and so his nameless nursemaid left him to tend to him. Without anyone to hold his attention, Simon passed back out in minutes.

He awoke later as something both alcoholic and medicinal was being poured down his throat by an older woman he also recognized. She can see auras, he recalled vaguely as he remembered how she tried to rush him away from the village on his previous stay.

Though he didn’t have much to contribute to their conversation, beyond confirming that it hurt pretty much everywhere she touched, he did learn Majoria’s name again, which was something. The older woman looked at him with real concern, though. Despite her words, Simon could tell that she didn’t think he was going to make it.

Though she’d been more than fair with him last time he’d saved their village, this time she didn’t look at him like a ticking time bomb, which was nice. What a difference a few lifetimes make, he told himself before he drifted back to sleep.

As bad as he hurt, he was so tired that first day, that it wasn’t so bad. Between the sleep and the booze, he more or less slept it away. Each time he awoke, the only change he noted was that there were fewer people in the room. He realized that almost certainly meant they’d died, but very little sadness made it through the fog of pain and confusion that surrounded him, and knowledge didn’t do much better.

Day two was the day that he learned Grann’s name was Hybissian. He learned that in a conversation where she explained that he probably wasn’t going to make it to her granddaughter, but Simon tuned that out. On some level, not making it would be a blessing, so he was willing to roll the dice.

The second day was much worse. By then, his complaints had solidified in a number of areas. Breathing hurt, moving hurt, thinking hurt, and if he did none of those things, the mild hangover from all the booze he’d downed hurt instead. Worse, he’d slept so much that his body no longer wanted to cooperate with him on that front.

By the third day, Simon was feeling more open to creative solutions. While he was still unwilling to cast spells, he was more open to the idea of killing himself than he had been in a long time, because this was miserable. Drunkenness could only last for so long, and in the state he was in, he would almost rather not drink anything at all, because that meant he’d have to get up to take a piss eventually.

Still, that was the worst of it. By day five, the swelling had gone down enough that he was no longer in constant pain, and by day six, when Majoria and her grandmother Hybissian replaced his splint with a more durable plaster cast, he could even move around without agony.

That was an improvement, but only compared to the rock-bottom condition he’d started out in. He got a rude awakening when he saw his own reflection for the first time. That explains why she wasn’t as flirty with me this time, he decided. While he’d probably be fine eventually, he looked more like the orc who had practically caved in his skull than the man he’d been the week before from certain angles, and that resemblance only increased as his bruises faded from black and blue to gray-green. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

When he was given his equipment back and a room at the local inn to aid in his recuperation, he noted just how close he'd come to death. His helmet wasn't just bent, it was dented in by more than an inch all along one side of the rim. It was garbage now, but it had saved his life without a doubt.

Simon never got around to killing a cow with his dagger, though not because it would have been wrong. He was simply too broken to deal with the struggles of a farm animal, and too concerned with what people would think if he got better in a day. Speaking was nearly as hard as it had been a dozen deaths ago, so he could hardly expect to talk himself out of anything complicated.

If he really wanted to stick around and do more gradual experimentation, he needed to blend in with the locals, not alienate them. Simon was fairly certain it would be a long time before he could see anything useful again after all he'd done in Charia.

So, he tried his vampiric dagger on trees near the village with mixed results. Stabbed into the bark and outer woody layers, it did almost nothing. However, if he took the time to probe deeper, he could kill a tree dead in a couple of hours by stabbing deep into its heartwood.

It was a depressing sight to murder a tree like that. He could watch the branches droop visibly over several hours, and by the following day, the leaves would be brown and curled. Still, one couldn’t argue with the results. Every tree he murdered shortened his months-long healing time by several weeks, and after three of them, he was no longer in constant pain.

That was enough for him to stop, but it was also enough for him to try to work through some simple equations. If a human contained seventy years of life, and a goblin had something like three to five, then a tree held less than one. They might even be less than six months. He’d have to do more studying to be sure.

Well, you’ll have time for that if you want, he told himself, because you’re here for as long as you want. The next level is a swamp, and after that the basilisk, and there ain’t no way I’m fighting that thing without lightning bolts.