Death After Death

Chapter 128: For A While

By the time they docked in Abrese, it was clear that the plague had been strangled in its infancy. It was clear that the health of those they’d rescued on the ship was improving every day, and it was seen as a boon from the Gods. It felt like a real win to Simon, and honestly, he needed one of those.

At least until they reached the city, where he found cases in progress already. That made him sigh. So this was all about the ship, huh, Helades? He thought to himself. It had to be at this point because he knew for a fact that without intervention, the crew sickened, and the thing sank pier side right here.

Simon had no idea what that meant, but he was once again annoyed that the boat, or even one person on it, mattered more than the whole city, and when the captain announced they were leaving as soon as possible, it gave Simon an interesting decision.

When the Sea Seraph left, the gate to the next level would leave with it. That meant that his run was done unless he stayed on for the next leg of the voyage. Only, he didn’t want to.

Simon was sick of running from level to level with no clear purpose, and even if he’d solved this one, he wasn’t feeling particularly inclined to give up on a city of tens of thousands just because she had no need of them.

Still, he hesitated and spent a little time talking to the crew about the route they planned to take before he slammed the door on everything he knew. “We come back this way every year or two,” the quartermaster said with a shrug. “It’s hard to say exactly. It all depends on the price of wine in Vitilay and the price of rice in... Well, then there’s the storm season around the Summer Isles to consider, too. Certain sure we’ll be back someday, but when is anyone’s guess. Not even the captain can say for certain.”

It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was enough. Simon left the boat with his meager possessions and made his way to the inner harbor. Abrese was a town he’d already spent months in already, so he knew his way around, and instead of wandering around, he made his way to the lower temple courtyard that would eventually become a hospital of sorts and got started.

Last time, he’d been here six months in the future, so most of the dying had already been done, and the city was pretty hollowed out. This time, it was only just getting started, though, and thanks to the reduced amount of spread, the healthy still outnumbered the sick. That wouldn’t last forever, though.

The Weeping Pox, as the locals came to call it, because of the pustulant yellow sores and the way the dying cried out in pain wasn’t as deadly as the black plague he’d seen in Hurag. Not by a long shot, but left unchecked, he knew it would still kill half the city. Sadly, many of those deaths would be caused by some of the crazy treatments of the day rather than by the disease itself.

The local healers believed that the best way to prevent the disease from spreading was to seal the sores with hot irons or molten tar. Predictably, this didn’t end well for the patient, but that didn’t seem to stop them from thinking that next time, it would work, and Simon advocated against it almost from the moment he arrived.

No one listened to him, though, not at first. Why should they? He was just another guy with a strange accent peddling cures to the desperate public. The only real difference was that he had magic.

It was on one of those blustery days when even four walls and a stout roof couldn’t quite keep out all the chill that Simon had a most interesting conversation with a dying sailor.

“Simon, is it?” the man coughed. “I should have known it would be a Simon that got me killed after all this time.” The man looked like he would have walked right out of Simon’s little hospital if he had the strength to do so. Instead, he lay there looking miserable.

“That’s a strange thing to tell your doctor,” Simon answered dismissively. He’d had lots of less-than-cooperative patients by this point. People could get strange when the fever took them, and he’d long since grown used to the accusations that he was trying to kill them instead of save them.

“What else should I tell someone named Simon,” the man said with a scowl. “Not only is your name a rare one, but it’s well and truly cursed.”

That piqued his interest, and Simon tried to follow up further, but the man quickly became delirious, and all he could really find out about him was that his name was Lem, and he was from the north. It wasn’t until days later when he was past the worst of it and finally on the mend, that Simon learned the truth: the sailor was from Schwarzenbruck, and he had a strange story to tell.

“I’m sorry about before, Doc, but in my defense, I really did think you were poisoning me,” Lem told him apologetically once the fever had died down and it was clear he was going to be okay. “You have to understand. Where I come from, up near the Black River, that name is cursed.”

“Oh?” Simon asked, feigning disinterest. “And why is that?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard the stories, even this far south,” the sailor said, taking a drink of water before he continued. “Simon the Cursed. Simon the Black. Simon the Barrow Wight. It's an ugly thing. He was a necromancer that summoned the dead and nearly destroyed the whole region.”

“Warlocks do cause untold harm,” Simon agreed blandly. “Though I find that most of them are just stories.” His manner was almost disinterested as he pretended to check the patient's temperature and his bandages, but inside, he was seething as he wondered how the events with the Butcher’s Bill had gotten twisted.

Simon’s anger only grew as Lem proceeded to tell him the story of the brave warrior Kell, who had died thwarting the Arch-necromancer Simon’s evil plan to raise an army of the dead to conquer the region. “There’s still zombies that are found now and then to this day,” the sailor said finally, “but even if they weren’t, I can’t imagine a single woman that would dare give her child such an awful name.”

“Well, in my land, it doesn’t have such an evil reputation,” Simon said with a shrug before moving on. He was definitely going to have to solve that level because there was no way that he was going to let Kell end up as a storied hero after all the awful things he’d done.