Death After Death

Simon’s magic surged within him, applying tons of pressure to the stake, but still, she held it. It jittered and shook in his hand as irresistible force met immovable object. Then it exploded, sending wooden shards and jagged splinters into both his hands, her hand, and her chest.

Simon cried out in pain as he took a step back. Freya seemed almost nonplussed by it, though, and even as she sat up, the jagged wounds that the stake had inflicted on her chest began to heal.

“What a pity,” she said, “I loved that dress. Please don’t tell me you’ve killed my tailor. It will be ever so troublesome to replace it if she’s gone.”

“You, you can’t be alive!” Simon answered. His denial overpowered even his pain.

“Well, technically, I’m not,” she admitted, still fussing with the shredded top of her dress as she showed far more concern for it than for him. “According to the books on the subject, I’m undead, but you should know all about it. You’re the one that did this.”

“What?” Simon gasped. “I would never! I—”

Freya flickered then. As soon as he started to speak, she glanced up at him with her murderous red eyes. Then, in an instant, she’d bridged the gap between them. She didn’t move or even dash. She just disappeared by her coffin as she reappeared by him and slapped him hard enough across the face to send him sprawling.

He got back on his feet as quickly as he could without putting any pressure on his ruined hands, but she was not waiting there to pound on him. Instead, she looked down her nose at him from where she stood before.

“Do not lie to me,” she shouted, showing real emotion for the first time. “I remember you. The blacksmith. You claimed you would cure me so that I would not become a zombie like my beloved Kel, and I didn’t. I became something so much worse than that. All that I’ve become… All that I’ve done is because of you!”

“I… All that I did was use the energy of the environment to power the words of greater cure to purge the curse that was within you,” he said. “I don’t even know how one would go about creating a vampire. You have to believe me.”

She laughed coldly then. “All this time, I thought I’d been cursed by some servant of the gods for failing to save my beloved, and the truth was it was just a bumbling fool. I’ll bet you’re the one that killed my darling Hidaran last night, too, aren’t you?”

“The vampire that attacked those villagers?” Simon asked as his mind raced to figure out how he was going to kill her. “Yeah, he died as he lived, violently.”

At this point, it would probably be easier to just kill himself and do this again. If it had been anyone but Freya in that coffin, he already would have. Hell, if it had been anyone but her, he wouldn’t have hesitated. They’d be ash, and he’d be victorious, but this? This was entirely unforeseen, and it made his heart ache as surely as if he’d driven the stake through instead of his own bleeding hands.

Even now, he was sure there was some way to reverse this. There had to be.

“What a pity,” she sighed. “He was an excellent lover. That will only make what happens to you next all the more painful. I suppose that while I consider the correct punishment for someone, I shall have to be comforted by Gavarall or Prince—”

“The two bozos in the basement?” he interrupted. “Yeah, gone too. I cleaned out most of the castle while you—”

She flickered again and pulled him off of his feet by his breastplate despite being nearly a foot shorter than him. “How dare you murder my harem. First, you condemn me to this life, and then you destroy it? I will make you rue the day that you—”

As she threatened him, he brought his knee up hard toward her face. He hadn’t expected that to do any good, of course, but then he didn’t expect to be able to actually strike her, either. He was right on both counts. In response to his blow, she released him, and then, grabbing him by his calf as he fell, she swung him hard into the stone wall.

For a moment, his vision was full of gray fog and afterimages, and it took him several seconds to realize that the world around him appeared to be spinning because he was rolling down the stairs to the next level. He never made it that far. Somewhere before the doorway that would have led to the third floor, there was a brick wall. He was trapped.

Simon struggled to clear his head as Freya strode down to him one fluid step at a time. She was saying something. Either she was trying to tell him how much the deaths of her pet vampires had hurt her, or she was telling him what awful things she planned to do to him. He had no idea. All he could hear was ringing.

He couldn’t hear, he could barely think, and his hands were so mangled he might never grip a sword again. He could still speak, though, and right now, that was all he needed.

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He shouted, “Gervuul Barom!”

Even as he started to speak, Freya figured out what he was up to and dashed toward him again, but somehow, the stairs slowed her down, and by the time she was inches from him, the entire stairwell was bathed in the blinding light of faux sunlight as the tiny sun that Simon imagined faded into existence.

Freya screamed and staggered backward, even as she started to smolder. Simon had never tried to cast greater light before, and though it worked very well, it obviously wasn’t enough to kill a vampire. It looked like sunlight to him. He could feel the warmth of it on his skin from here, like a real summer’s day. He had no idea how long it would last, but he imagined that was a function of intensity.

It’s not real sunlight, he thought incredulously. Does that mean if I use a word of metal to make silver, it won’t kill a werewolf?

He didn’t know the answer, but right now, that was unimportant. He’d gotten what few answers he could, and it was clear that he was entirely outmatched by Freya. So, while she screeched in pain and tried to crawl to safety, he used his teeth to pull out the biggest chunks of wood, then used a word of healing to get his hands working again.

His hands were big, deformed mitts that made him look more like a troll than anything. Because of the way his flesh had knitted back together, he had only three fingers on one hand and two fingers on the other, but at least he still had opposable thumbs, and that would have to do.

Simon grabbed another stake from his belt and charged up the stairs at the burning corpse. He still wanted answers, but he’d come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t getting any, not this run. Hell, maybe not ever, he realized, because the right thing to do here was clearly to go and reset level six so that none of this ever happened.

He didn’t think about that now. Instead, he ran up behind her, careful not to block the light from his glowing orb, and jammed the stake through her rib cage. Well, he started to. He brought it down hard, but with charred skin, seeing where her ribs were was impossible, and it glanced off one of them. He raised it back up to try again, and then She reached out and dug her claws into one of his calves, ripping through flesh and muscle with equal ease.

Simon screamed and tried to pull away, but she didn’t let go. Instead, his movement rolled her over. This wasn’t a motion that she seemed to have the strength for under the withering beam of light, but with his help, she could now gaze at him with her lidless eyes.

He instantly realized his mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it. Once he met her gaze, he couldn’t look away. In fact, he couldn’t do anything at all. All he could do was stare slackly while his leg bled and hope that the light had weakened her enough that she couldn’t speak.

For several seconds, it seemed as though it might have. We might both stand here until sunrise, he thought, hopefully, before she managed to croak, “Extinguish that infernal light at once!”

Canceling a spell was not a thing. Once the power had been invested, it continued until its essence ran out. He couldn’t explain that to the vampire, though. He couldn’t even turn away from her gaze. All he could do was try the option that was the most likely to work.

“Aufvarum Barom,” he said flatly, willing the words of disperse light to dispel the effect.

It wasn’t enough to extinguish the blazing orb, at least not at first. It muted it by half in seconds, though, and then it slowly dimmed from there. Simon would have loved to turn and watch it so that he could understand how the two magical commands had interacted. He couldn’t, though; there was only one command that mattered now, and she was lying beneath him, claws still sunk deep into his flesh.

“Stay,” she rasped. “Like the dog you are.” Her words lacked strength, but they were full of poison just the same.

Her flesh was starting to return to her now in patches. Freya’s dress was all but ruined, and she looked like the corpse of a much, much older version of herself, but even as she came alive again, she said nothing. Instead, she rose slowly to her feet, still locking her hateful gaze with his, and when she stood, she hissed and sank her fangs deep into his neck and began to drain him dry.

It was an uncomfortable sensation, but it didn’t hurt like he expected it to. He ignored all of that, though, and instead tried to will himself to grasp the amulet he’d made. It was plain symbol of a sun, which was typical enough for a Whitecloak amulet.

No one would notice where it hung around his neck, or the fact that the points were sharp rough to pierce flesh. All he needed to do was grasp it tightly enough to bleed and it would go off like a pipe bomb. He couldn’t do that, though. He couldn’t even raise his hands.

Instead, after a few seconds of frustration he tried to bring himself to whisper Meiren. It was a word that was both fast and irrevocable in the damage its flames would do. He didn't have time for a greater word, of course, but a fire spell aimed squarely at his cerebellum should be enough to end him forever.

Still, he couldn’t do it. It was only two syllables. It was pretty much the easiest thing in the world, but all he could do was stand there like a statue. She told me to stay, not to stay frozen, he raged, but it did no good.

It was only when he was so weak that he collapsed to his knees that she finally stopped drinking. She was a young woman once more, and though she wasn’t quite as lovely as she’d been laying in her coffin, she was far from the charred hag she’d been moments before.

“Now we will begin again,” she commanded, nearly as youthful as she was when she started the night. “You will tell me everything I wish to know without falsehood or magical trickery, and then, I shall lock you in the bottom of the lowest dungeon and torment you for decades to come. You will not be allowed to die until I allow it, and I shall never grow tired of making you suffer for this insult. Is that understood?”

“Y-yes…” Simon tried to fight the word that clawed its way out of his throat, but in the end, he couldn’t.

Freya smirked, and said, “From now on, you will address me as Mistress or Your Majesty. Is that understood?”

Simon gritted his teeth and fought again. He might have loved the woman she’d been once, but he was going to find a way to grind the monster before him to dust.