Death After Death

Chapter 106: Answers

“Helades!” Simon yelled, staggering toward the light. “Helades, this is level 30, and I’m here! You owe me some answers!”

“Well, an answer at least,” she said just behind him, making him whirl around to see the Goddess. “And might I say, you’ve made excellent progress. It only took a handful of deaths and a few years of life to get all the way down to the ogre. Good work.”

“I didn’t come here to make progress!” he yelled, wiping away the blood on his forehead before it dripped into his eye and sheathing his sword lest the Goddess decide he was threatening her. “I came to talk to you!”

“So talk,” she said, her smile growing a little tighter. “What is it you want to know.”

“Freya, was she faithful to me? Did I fail her? Did Varten...” he asked without a moment's hesitation, but despite his need, he still couldn’t bring himself to finish the awful thought.

A dozen more important questions flashed through his mind in that instant, but he ignored them. That was the only one that kept him up at night, though. That was the one he needed to know the answer to more than anything.

“Oh, Simon, I thought we were past this,” Helades sighed. “Are you sure there aren’t other, more pressing questions on your mind?”

She proceeded to drone off a list of questions in his own voice, one after the other, and each one left him slightly more pissed off as she seemed to read his mind and, worse, mock him: “Why am I too late to save people, but just in time to clean up the mess? How does that make any sense? Why do some levels reappear while others stay completed? What the hell is it I'm supposed to do with that stupid basement anyway?”

“Passed?” he asked, balling up his fists involuntarily as he ignored her list. “I loved her. Helades. I still do, but I need to know. More than I need to know why Schwarzenbruck is back or why Freya has changed. I need to know!”

“Simon,” she sighed. “She... your wife, she was always faithful to you. How could you doubt that? She was a good woman, and you did the best you could for her. You could have done more, but agonizing over that will take you to dark places that no one should go, especially not when they’re functionally immortal. Let her rest in peace.”

“But, the things she said...” he answered, holding back tears, “And then when Varten...”

Helades did the most unexpected thing then and stepped forward, giving him a hug. He was about to hug her back, but instead, the world dissolved around him.

Suddenly, he was reliving those awful moments, but in reverse. Killing Varten and feeling the urge to do it over and over again, burying Freya, trying and failing to save her life, and then coming home to find her in the arms of another man and watching her slip and fall to her death. Things were moving fast, and even before he fully experienced one moment, the next was rushing up to meet him.

Every part of him strained to use a word of force to catch her as she fell or to decapitate the foul man that had done this to her. No, he thought to himself in that instant, decapitation would be much too good for the man. He wanted to atomize him and turn him into a bloody mist. He wanted to watch him burn and...

Even as his rage started to boil over, things progressed further back, but now they were from Freya’s perspective. Instead of watching himself go back out to fight off the orcs and save Crowvar, he watched his wife have a conversation with Varten just before he arrived.

“No,” she insisted, pushing the man away, “If Simon dies, and all is lost, I still wouldn’t want you, Varten. Not like this. Not with you. Not ever with you!”

What he’d walked in on and thought was a moment of lustful passion was a moment of anger instead. That surprised him even though he knew that it shouldn’t.

Each moment was followed by the one before it, and they were only picking up speed as they went, which made it hard to follow the events and made the dialog nearly impossible to grasp. He puzzled it out, though, as best he could. To him, it seemed the noble had been expecting the city to fall and had tried and failed to seduce Simon’s wife.

The man should have been on the wall fighting for his life, but instead, he was trying to take what wasn’t his. It was infuriating, but more than that, the exchange showed that they’d never been intimate. There was no secret affair as he’d worried about for so long.

“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be,” he sneered. “I’d hate to make you sew your pretty little dress back together after I cut it off you.”

Simon’s heart went cold as he watched this terrible moment. It hurt him more than he would have thought possible that this happened and that he’d not only been unable to protect her, but he’d never even known about it. That mystery, more than anything, made him fear what awful thing the Goddess was going to show him next.

Freya didn’t flinch or cower, though. She definitely didn’t give in. Instead, she stepped forward until the knife was inches from her throat.

“Go on,” she dared him, “Do it. Kill me.”

“I don’t have to kill you to have my way with you,” Varten snarled.

“If you do that, I’ll just kill myself, and it will amount to the same thing,” Freya shot back. “When my husband finds me cold and dead on our floor, he’ll know what happened, and he’ll know who did it; you know what will happen then?”

“How could he possibly—” Varten asked, but Freya ignored him and continued stepping close enough to his weapon that he was forced to pull it back a little bit.

“He’ll rip your black heart and burn your city to the ground,” she continued. “You’ve never seen him. Not the way I have.”

“Him? Simon?” Varten laughed. “I’ll have him shot from the wall before he ever reaches the gate. Even if he really is a warlock, that will be enough to put him in the ground. You place an awful lot of confidence in fairy stories.”

Freya grinned ferally, “Like that’s the first time Simon has been shot. I know you’ve heard the rumors. The way he heals? The way he kills?”

Varten swallowed hard. He said nothing, but the look in his eyes said he had indeed heard the rumors.

“He fought through a city of zombies... he walked through worlds to save me,” she bragged, acting like she didn’t have a care in the world. “What are you to him? You’re just a little prick with a little prick.”

“I’m not afraid of him or you,” Varten said, but there was no conviction there.

Instead, all he could do was lick his dry lips and decide whether or not he wanted to call her bluff. In the end, he decided that he did not and moved his knife quickly down to her arm.

“Your husband won’t always return home,” he gloated. “One day, he’ll die for the glory of my Barony, and when he does, I’ll be coming by to console you personally.”

“I will never be yours,” Freya spat.

“No? I’ve already marked you along with everything else that belongs to me,” he smiled cruelly as he looked at her now bleeding arm. “When the time is right, I will be back to claim you myself.”

Varten slammed the door behind him, and when he was gone, she slumped against the door and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor. All her bravado and her fearlessness drained out of her then, and she began to sob. “Simon,” she cried, “Where are you?”