Death After Death

As Simon crouched there on his hands and knees, taking in huge lungfuls of air, it took him almost a minute to remember where he was. “The spiders,” he whispered to himself.

No, the spider, he corrected himself. Remembering the giant that loomed in the darkness somewhere above him in the darkness. Suddenly, it all came back to him. The webs on fire, the spiders surrounding him, and the giant spider towering over it all were each a terrifying memory all on their own, but together?

For a second, he wondered if he should set the place ablaze again, but then he realized he had precious little choice. Last time, no one had noticed him until he’d sliced through his first web on his quest to get to the next doorway. This time, though, he could hear skittering and chittering around him on all sides in the darkness, and worse, he was glowing.

Between the exceptionally loud way he’d entered this level and the light, it was like he’d painted a bullseye on himself. So, aiming toward the closest sound, he uttered, “Meiren,” and sent a long streamer of fire out into the dark.

That single blast wouldn’t be enough to kill even one of the dog-sized spiders he saw moving toward him, but it was enough to catch all of their very flammable webs on fire. As the monstrous creatures fled the flames, he ran toward them, seeking the relative safety of the known clear area as the fire started to spread throughout the cavern.

For now, he wasn’t heading to the exit or to anywhere else. He was just staying a moving target, just in case, as chaos unfolded all around him. It was literally insane, he decided, but he couldn’t help but smile to fight the madness.

He was running through the center of a firestorm, and that firestorm was illuminating a spider stampede of dozens of eight-legged critters, several of which certainly outweighed him. That was just the warm-up act though. As soon as the fire spread far enough, it finally illuminated the two nearest legs of the spider god that towered over everything else that was going on.

Simon’s light had dimmed enough to be invisible, and the light of the next level was lost in the thousands of tiny temporary flames that raced along the spiderwebs in every direction. The world was on fire now, and that afforded him just enough light to make out some of the larger details. He could see that this was a city, or at least it had been one, long ago. Beyond that, he could see the bottom of the giant spider’s abdomen and thorax, lording over everything.

It had to be thirty or forty feet tall at least, and though it was possible he might have been able to cut through one of the thing's massive legs with a battleaxe, there was no way that the dagger he currently had was going to do more than scratch it. That was okay, though, because he had other weapons.

He quickly ruled out fire because this didn’t seem to be bothering the thing. Next, he considered force, but he knew that it would take a lot of words to chop up something with eight legs. So, eventually, he settled on earth. Why not? It had worked for the ogre, so it should work for the spider, too, right?

“Gervuul Vosden!” he shouted, aiming past the creature to the ceiling that loomed above it as he tried to cause a cave-in.

Earth, it turned out, was the wrong word. As a result of his magic, there was a terrific crack, and half of the cavern came down on top of the thing, crushing it like a bug. That much, at least, was appropriate, he thought as he ran to the nearest doorway he could and wondered if he would survive long enough to celebrate his victory.

At least this will clear the level, even if I die, he reassured himself as he stood there enduring the end of the world.

The sound of falling rocks was deafening, and once the choking dust billowed throughout the cavern, it was enough to smother any lingering flames, plunging him into total darkness.

He stood there for a long time, controlling his breathing and waiting for the taste and smell of rock dust to decline before he did anything. He wasn’t dead. That was what mattered. He’d survived, and none of his limbs had been crushed, but even if he lit himself up like a Christmas tree, he wouldn’t see anything but dust.

So he waited, breathing slowly and deeply in the darkness, ignoring the occasional skittering sound of shifting rubble. It was a terrifying hour or so, but it gave him plenty of time to think, and by the end of it, he had a plan.

“Gervuul Barom!” he shouted before coughing slightly at the strain of using two greater words in a row. After that, he stood perfectly still, listening to his voice echo at random through the partially collapsed cave.

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Greater light wasn’t something he used very often, but in this case, it was the right choice. He didn’t go for anything fancy. He just created an orb of white light hanging in the center of the cavern like a tiny sun. He wasn’t sure how long it would last, but at least it wouldn’t draw the eight-eyed survivors right to him.

Before Simon moved, he simply took in the devastation. The place had been nothing but ruins before he’d done what he’d done, but now it looked like the aftermath of a disaster movie. There was rubble everywhere, and though in places he could see spiders moving around, the cavern as a whole was dominated by the corpse of the giant spider. It was splattered across half the cavern and…

“Damn it,” he whispered as he realized where it was that the crushed monster had landed. It was pretty much right on top of the gateway that he needed to go to the next level.

That meant that this was the end of his run because, by some miracle, even if the magical doorway had survived the impact, he wasn’t digging a mineshaft through spider guts to reach it.

“Well, it was a good run,” he told himself as he reflected. He’d almost certainly solved this level, and though he still hadn’t managed to figure out what was going on with the plague, the plant should be resolved, too.

That’s what? Four levels this run? He wondered. Not bad.

Hell, it might even be five, he realized. He had no idea if what he’d done at that terrible party was enough to count it as solved, but he supposed he’d find out next run.

Against that backdrop, it was hard to beat himself up too much, but he still felt disappointed in himself. This was the first time he’d ever destroyed a portal, and though he didn’t think that would fuck anything up long-term, he still felt like an idiot. If he’d just been more precise with his spell, he could have…

“Precise with an avalanche, huh,” he chuckled to himself. “Good luck with that.”

With that thought in mind, Simon climbed out of the little hole he found himself in and started exploring the place. Even the light he’d made wasn’t enough to illuminate the whole cavern, and shadows were everywhere.

The first thing that he did was go back to where he’d entered the level to find the pools of salt water he'd left behind from his dramatic entrance. Then, after he washed himself in one to remove the thick layer of dust he’d accrued, he froze water from one of the cleaner pools to his knife like a Popsicle. He would have frozen more, but he had nothing to carry it in, and without a water skin, this was his only real chance to get a drink since frozen salt water was very low in salt.

After that, as his light slowly faded in the distance, he started looking for a way out of there. His movements were slow and careful so as not to become spider bait, but the catastrophe he’d inflicted on them seemed to be enough to make the survivors slink off to their hidey holes and question their life choices.

After that, time became harder to track. He was pretty sure that his light spell lasted for another six hours, before he had to turn his dagger into a minor word of light so that he could see, and if each of those smaller lights lasted for about two hours, then it took him half a day to find an exit.

In that time, he discovered a few human bodies, and a lot of goblin corpses that had long since been reduced to yellowed bones and desiccated flesh. Other than the fact that they’d died to spiders and in turn been eaten by them, there wasn’t a lot he could learn.

Why did humans live underground? Where was this in comparison to the rest of the world? He had no clue, and that was frustrating, but not as frustrating as finding an iron gate part way down the corridor that he’d thought was an exit from spider city. Not only did the thing look very sturdy, but it had long since rusted shut.

Fortunately, that wasn’t going to be a problem for him. Even though he spent the next few minutes coughing up blood, Simon used his third greater word of the day. This time, it was force, and with a terrible shrieking noise, both sides of the gate were hit by an invisible fist of forces that had to be at least as strong as the semi that had brought him here.

He cringed at that memory. It didn’t come up often, but when it did, he was embarrassed by it. How could he have ever been so selfish and stupid, he wondered?

His embarrassment did nothing to protect the doors, though. Both of them caved in, and the right side of the gate was torn entirely off its hinges and sent tumbling end over end down the hall.

Simon healed his throat with some effort and then produced another small flashlight and started walking down the hall. This one was the dimmest one he’d made so far. That wasn’t because he couldn’t make them stronger. Instead, it was because he was trying to make them last longer, and there seemed to be a definitive relationship between the strength and longevity of the effect when it came to magic.

At this point, he’d definitely used too much, and even the weakest words of minor light were a strain, but it wasn’t like there was anything he could do. He was lost in apparently endless caverns, and the best he could manage was to not be completely terrified by the idea.

Simon went to sleep that night in a crevice without any answers, and the day that followed was no better. On the third day, he continued without light because he worried his throat could no longer even take a minor word. That was until he heard the sound of running water.

Simon stayed there for more than a day, drinking deeply until he couldn’t and giving himself a chance to rest. At that time, he expected a goblin or a spider attack, but this place was a desert. In the end, his only enemies were silence and thirst, and all he could do was keep going and look for a way out.

He went as far as he could and as long as he could, but after that, he didn’t find water again. Somewhere, exhausted and hungry, Simon finally succumbed to deprivation and passed out in the dark. He didn’t wake up again, at least not in that life.

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