Death After Death

While the volcanic eruption made it pretty easy to know where he was in the timeline, Simon was surprised how quickly things got back to normal. People still talked about it in the days and weeks after it had happened, and there was a resurgence of interest after that when there were whispers that a brave hero had died fighting a terrible stone giant.

After that, though, things calmed down surprisingly quickly. Life, it would seem, went on, as long as the world was in no immediate danger of ending. That surprised Simon a little bit, but he supposed that he’d seen similar things happen in the aftermath of Schwarzenbruck’s zombie apocalypse.

After that, keeping track of the slow sequence of events that made up his past life wasn’t hard, not even a day's ride from the city. The rumors about what had really happened the night the volcano had erupted came and went whenever a new trade ship would dock for a night or two. However, more and more, those stories were eclipsed by a new one: the Queen of Ionia had taken a consort. If rumors were to be believed, he was an ugly foreigner, but most doubted that could possibly be the case for someone as radiant and dignified as the queen.

Sometime after that, Simon started making monthly trips to the city just to try to catch a glimpse of himself. He even used stealth and a little magic to climb the palace walls a few times and just watched his own recovery. It was an interesting sensation, and he wondered what would happen if he took out the past version of himself.

That would be a paradox, for sure, his brain told him. He believed it mostly, too, but with magic in play, he honestly had no idea. I’m not him, right? I mean, he was me, but he died, and I’m me now, so if he ceased to exist, nothing about me would change, but the future of this level certainly would…

He obviously had no intention of killing himself, but as a thought experiment, it crept into his mind again and again when he observed himself in the garden or the library as past Simon made his slow recovery. It was only when he saw himself with Elthena that those positive memories pushed aside his darker thoughts.

Still, all of that came to an end when the war started. Simon knew that little would come of it beyond the spread of disease, but during that time, the normally lax atmosphere around the palace transformed, and sneaking in without killing one or two people became effectively impossible.

“Past me would probably notice if future me started dropping bodies,” he told himself one day as he walked back to Olven’s Narrows with his mule, which was heavily loaded with the various supplies he’d purchased on this trip. “But would that cause a paradox? How much can I change the circumstances of past me before future me ceases to exist, if it even really works like that? What do you think, Daisy Two.”

The mule, of course, had no answers. Really, he should probably do an experiment to figure this out, but he had no idea how to do something like that without causing catastrophic consequences if he was wrong. “Do I bring someone else through a portal with me, solve a level, and then kill them in the past to see how that ripples out through the future?”

As the plague started to sweep across the region, he thought about this more and more, as well as the idea that some other version of himself might be watching him, even as he watched himself now. Really, though, all of those thoughts were just to keep himself from worrying about his impending reunion with Elthena.

It was something that he’d yearned for, for decades now, and day by day, it was getting closer. Of course, that also meant that his time in his sleepy little village was coming to an end, which was sad in its own way.

Simon had worked hard to make sure that no one died as the plague swept through it. It had a wise woman, of course, who was good with herbs, but under her treatments, a few older people had almost passed away. They would have, if not for a few surreptitious words of lesser curing he’d used to help them get through the worst of it.

That happened less often as he taught her some better ways to do things. “A blacksmith teaching me how to do my job,” she complained in an amiable enough way on more than one occasion. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

“Blacksmithing is just for fun,” he assured her. “Before I came here, I was a scholar. Everywhere I go, I just learn from people smarter than me.”

“Then I’ll be sure to teach you a few things before you continue on,” she responded.

Simon smiled at that. She had nothing to teach him, but he suspected she could see the auras he could not because of the way she acted around certain strangers. So, the mere fact that she didn’t bristle at him was a welcome victory of a sort.

The only person that Simon would miss in all of this was Niko. He was growing up to be a fine young man, and the fact that he’d practically run the blacksmith shop while Simon had tended to the sick had been a good sign for the things ahead.

So, it was especially heartbreaking when he told the boy that he would probably be moving on soon, and Niko reacted so poorly. “But why?” the boy had practically wailed. “Are you unhappy here? Did I do something wrong?”

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“It's not about that,” Simon said. “I love it here, but soon it will be time for me to move on. I’ve—”

“I’ll go with you Master Ennis!” Niko volunteered immediately.

They both knew that was impossible, of course. He had his mother to think of, but even as Simon worked through those messy emotions, he realized that he’d come to look on the boy as a son more than an apprentice after the years Simon had spent training him. It hurt him more than he would have thought to discover that, even as he tried to cut the only bond he’d had like this since his time with Gregor so long ago.

“I’ll be in Ionar for a while at least before I leave the region,” Simon promised his apprentice, “So It’s not like I’ll just disappear. I’ll still visit now and then, and just think you’ll finally have all of this to yourself, just like we talked about.”

“I’d rather work for you, even if I make less money,” the boy sighed.

The conversation wasn’t finished that night, or even that week, but eventually, the boy grudgingly accepted the reality of the situation. Things weren’t the same between them after that, but despite the increased distance, Niko still hugged Simon when he finally went to leave the following week.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “For everything.”

Simon smiled at that but kept the tears in his eyes until he was well down the beach. He left the boy pretty much everything. The only things he’d taken when him were a few blades, his armor, and a backpack full of his most important possessions.

He'd never actually gotten around to making a magic blade, like the vampiric sword he’d designed, but he probably wouldn't need one anyway. Everything else, including most of his ready cash, he’d left to the boy. He wouldn’t need more than money for a room with a view of the harbor for a few weeks, after all.

Simon's days in Ionar this time were characterized by anxiousness more than anything. He kept trying to tell himself that he should be happier, but with everything that had happened and everything that might yet happen, that was harder.

His mind just kept going in circles about two twin mysteries: time and relationships. How can I live my strange life without screwing everything up for me and the ones I love? He asked himself.

He didn’t have an answer. Instead, all he could do to distract himself was sketch pictures of ships coming into the harbor while he waited for one specific ship to indicate that Elthena was about to send him off and out of her life forever. The place he’d picked to keep a look out for that, at least, was beautiful. Ionar was a shining work of art as much as it was a place, and from where he was staying in the upper city, he could see the lower city, the beautiful harbor, and the steady parade of trade that was the place’s lifeblood as it came and went.

In that time, he experimented with small magical alterations to his features. He gave himself the touch of gray that his doppelgänger had, and he toyed with a few of the more visible scars he could remember with the words of lesser flesh shaping. It worked better than he expected. Honestly, they looked pretty similar, at least as far as his memory went, but in the end, he decided to remove them.

“I’m not going to lie to her,” he told himself. “Not about this or about anything else. That’s not how we fix this.”

Nearly a month after he arrived in town, he saw a familiar ship docked near the breakwater. He hadn’t seen the Belaphora in a long time, but he recognized her instantly, even from this distance, so high above the harbor. There was just something about a ship you’d spent time on that made it stand out from all the other boats docked around it.

From that point on, Simon was up before dawn every morning, watching and waiting to see if this was the night that he was sent away. For four days and nights, his vigil went unrewarded, but on the fifth, he noted a man wrapped in a carpet being bundled off to the lower city on the back of his own donkey. It was an interesting scene, and when he looked up, he saw a teary-eyed queen standing on her balcony on the third floor, watching as he was led away.

“Daisy, how could you do me like this?” he whispered to himself, using the gallows humor to shield himself from the darker emotions that seeing Elthena like that inspired.

As soon as the sailors were out of the gate and heading down the main avenue, Simon took advantage of the dim light to vault the wall in an area that he already knew wasn’t well guarded. From there, he stole quickly and quietly along the deserted pre-dawn hallways as he made his way to the queen’s chambers.

Once, he almost ran into a servant on a blind corner, but the maid apologized and bowed. “I’m so sorry, mister Simon, sir,” she apologized, but he waved her off.

“Think nothing of it,” he said as he moved past her. For a moment, he felt supremely lucky, but a few seconds later, he realized that all of these people were used to seeing him around the palace every day, and the news would not yet have gotten out that he’d been exiled.

Simon spent a moment wondering what he might be able to do with that information, but he didn’t figure anything out by the time he slipped into the queen’s chambers. She was still standing on her balcony and didn’t come back in for a long time. He wondered if she planned to wait until he descended the winding cliffside road to the lower city, but she stayed out even longer than that.

She waited until the sun was up and the ship had actually left port before she came in. It was a gesture he found more than a little touching. In that time, servants came in twice, bringing her breakfast the first time and a message the second time.

As he stood there behind the bed curtains, waiting for her servants to leave, he could feel his heart beating harder in anticipation. He’d imagined this moment a thousand times, and even though it was going just as well as he could have hoped, he was still incredibly nervous.

“Guess who?” he asked in a gentle tone, trying not to startle her too badly.

He needn’t have worried. The woman barely reacted at all.

“Of course, it’s you, Simon. Who else would it be? I thought you would do something like this,” she sighed, not bothering to turn around and look at him. “Sit down, Simon. Let’s talk.”