Death After Death

Neither of them was dressed for this weather, and Simon dearly missed his leather armor. The breastplate he was still wearing from his disguise got cold so fast that he had to remove it or risk hypothermia. Still, he did what he could, and after he tucked Millie away in a crevice near enough to the front of the cave that she still had light, he went to get firewood.

Well, at least he tried to. She stopped him immediately with her tears and fears. “W-what if it comes back?” she asked, before pleading not to leave her behind.

“It can’t,” Simon told her. Rather than try to explain the portals to her, he said, “Even this much sunlight is enough to turn them to stone.”

He went round and round with her several times about how they would freeze to death without wood before she finally calmed down enough to let him go. “Ten minutes,” she called after him. “You said ten minutes and no more!”

Simon ended up taking at least fifteen that time, but there was little he could do. The snow was a foot deep, even under the thickest firs, and he had trouble finding much in the way of dead wood. By the time he returned with his snowy bundle, he could barely feel his hands and had to spend almost a minute warming them in his armpits before he could ignite a small fire with magic and start feeding it twigs and branches.

Millie flinched at that use of magic, too, but said nothing. She was probably too afraid to say anything, but for now, Simon didn’t feel like having that discussion. Mostly, he was just annoyed that he lacked the gesture for Karesh, which prevented him from using the Gelthic gesture to cast protection from the cold without speaking the words.

I really need to find the rest of those and fill in those gaps, he told himself. This shit is getting old.

Almost as soon as the fire was going strong in the mouth of their cave, Simon was ready to go back out for more wood. This time, though, it was with sense rather than fear that she tried to hold him back.

“The storm’s getting worse, not better!” she insisted, pointing at the growing blizzard. “You have to wait for it to pass at least a little!”

“I’d love nothing more,” Simon agreed, “But we don't know how high we are nor how far north we are. This could last for a week, and we’ll be out of wood in a few hours.”

Millie didn’t have an argument against that, at least not one that he’d accept, so he went back out into the weather, which was just as miserable as it sounded. While the fireside hadn’t exactly been warm, it had at least been out of the wind; now it cut right through him, and the guard’s flimsy cloak did little to keep it away.

For a few minutes, Simon trudged from tree to tree, but after gathering only a few small branches, he decided there had to be a better way.

I should look through the snow with my sight and find a proper deadfall, he told himself.

While that was a fine idea, living trees didn’t have much of an aura, and dead trees had none at all. But the animals in hibernation, they should be able to offer me clues, right?

That was a fine idea, and for several seconds Simon stood there, slowly tuning out the wind and snow. As far as he was concerned, this was just like the cold waters of his daily swim in Hepollyon; if he could tune that out, then he could tune this out.

Once he started to focus, though, the desolate wasteland came to life. First, he spotted birds in nests that he hadn’t noticed with the naked eye, and then other creatures burrowed into shallow dens on the ground.

Finally, though, he spotted what he was looking for. While most of the mounds were in fact boulders, a couple of them were occupied enough that they were probably bushes. One, though, appeared to be a deadfall between two larger boulders, which was exactly what he was looking for.

Simon had to disturb the poor hedgehogs or whatever it was that were trying to sleep peacefully underneath the tangle of wood, but that didn’t stop him. Once he verified that these were indeed dead branches and not green wood, he started hacking into them until he had enough to take back and justify all of this effort.

Two branches would be enough to get them through the night, and probably through the following day, too, Simon realized. So, he took one in each hand and started dragging them back through the snow, which was a slow process given how each of the heavy burdens acted like an anchor.

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Worst case, if we run out of firewood before the sky runs out of snow, I can use the ashes to make a circle of cold protection to keep us warm until the weather lets up, he told himself.

If he was out any longer, he risked frostbite, which, in addition to being awful, might really limit his options. “It-t’s going to be h-hard to cast spells d-down a finger,” he told himself through chattering teeth. It would probably be even harder to learn to do so left-handed as a backup, but that was still something he wanted to learn eventually. In a perfect world, he’d be able to use every word of power with both hands.

No, in a perfect world, I’d know all of them and use them with my hands and voice simultaneously, he corrected himself. The longer he used magic, the more he was convinced that it was less about power and more about specificity.

Complexity was a multiplier effect, whether it was found in the creation of artifacts or more complicated spells. He could burn a greater, greater word and wreck himself for months, or he could channel normal words in just the right sequence and get something nearly as spectacular. He was sure of it.

There was a huge gulf, though, between knowing and doing, and he contemplated that as he trudged through the snow, back to the cave. At least, he was pretty sure it was back to the cave. He’d been gone for half an hour this time, and his earlier tracks had been all but obliterated by the heavy snow.

I still have the pendant, he reminded himself. I can still use it to find Millie if I need to.

When Simon returned, he was bone tired. His worst instincts anticipated a lot of possible disasters, with a goblin massacre or an icy avalanche being the most likely terrible endings. What he hadn’t expected at all was to find ponies tethered just outside their little cave.

“Visitors,” Simon murmured, not sure if that was a good or a bad thing. He dropped the long branches he’d been dragging on the spot and moved up between the mounts, resting a hand on each of their flanks as he went so as not to startle them.

The ponies stirred restlessly, but didn’t try to kick him, and they made good cover as he approached the cave entrance. There he saw two men, standing on either side of the fire, crowding Millie as she looked like she was trying to decide if she wanted to risk running out past them into the snow, or deeper into the darkness of the cave. Neither of the men saw him there, as he lurked between their ponies, but Simon saw them, and what they planned to do was clear.

Not only was one of them holding a knife behind his back, but lust practically coruscated across their auras. The other man might be trying to soothe her with words as he would a horse, but Millie didn’t seem to understand any of it. That was okay, because neither man understood what was about to happen to them.

Simon didn’t hesitate. Before they could do anything that would traumatize the maid further, he pointed at the man with the knife and made the gesture of force. That launched him hard directly away from Simon, and he nearly disappeared amidst the shadows. Still, Simon heard more than saw the man’s skull hitting the stone wall, and felt certain he’d be out of the action for at least a minute or two from that sort of hit.

Then, he pulled his dagger and charged toward the other man. He obviously hadn’t seen exactly what happened to his partner, but even if he had, Simon doubted he’d have understood. At least, he did until he recognized something familiar that the man was wearing.

Murani, he realized as he looked at the familiar Magi medallion. He probably should have recognized their clothing before that moment, but he hadn’t been thinking about who these men were, only how they were going to die.

In a way, that was good news, as it told him they were almost certainly somewhere in the lands he was familiar with. Unfortunately, it told Simon something else, too. He couldn’t kill him, at least not here, not at close range. The Magi was a time bomb, and the last thing he needed was to die like that.

So, Simon pulled his blow, and even as the Magi barked the words “Hyakk Vrazig—” Simon didn’t stab him in the heart as he’d planned. Instead, he brought his elbow around and slammed it into the Magi’s throat, cutting it off before he could complete the spell. Flesh ruination was bad enough, and Simon had no desire to find out how those words ended.

While the magi choked, Simon said, “Too many words, and not enough manners. Bad combination. If you’d just used the word of fire or lightning, you might have won.”

Even as he berated the magi, though, he was moving. He grabbed him by the collar and the belt and flung him out into the snow. He landed far enough away that Simon could still keep an eye on him if he tried to rise, but not so close that the blast he expected would reach them.

He didn’t have to wait long. Less than a minute later, a ball of fire rippled outward in all directions, sending both ponies fleeing into the worsening blizzard and even chasing away the chill with a wall of warmth until the flames vanished.

“I… Who was that?” Millie asked, but Simon ignored her, striding deeper into the cave to check on the first man. If he were a magi, he’d have to be moved as well, but if he wasn’t, well, maybe he could provide Simon some answers.

When Simon found the warrior, he confirmed that he wasn’t a magi, but he also confirmed that he wasn’t breathing. His gesture of force had propelled the man into the unforgiving granite wall of the cave and cracked his skull. Simon didn’t feel bad about that, but he did wish he’d pulled his punch a little bit.

Simon dragged him out of the cave, too, but only just out of sight in the snow. The man was dressed warmly, and he’d steal those clothes later. First, he needed to tell Millie what in the hell was going on.

She clung to him from the moment he sat down next to the fire. “It’s okay,” he assured her, stroking her hair. “Those weren’t men, they were just monsters in human form. From now on, all we have to worry about is the cold and finding something to eat. Everything else will take care of itself.”