Death After Death

This time his first order of business, even before he built a place to stay was to establish an alias. Though the Oracle had mentioned it casually, there were indeed a lot of Simons in the world lately, and all of them were him, at some point in time. Right now, there was an herbalist in Ionar named Simon, and the last thing he wanted someone to do was make that association.

So, he went around the village, introducing himself as Ennis instead. It was only once that was done that he started the hard work of getting a roof over his head and a bed underneath him. That took a few days and started out as a lean-too. Once he’d made it clear he was setting up shop, he went into the city to the lower market, which the past version of himself used, and he bought the mule he’d been craving, along with a few tools he was missing and a stout axe.

The axe was for timbers, which he would need if he wanted to build something that resembled an actual shop again instead of just a forge. He made two trips into the mountains for two-inch thick pines that were the right size. Simon chose the straightest ones he could find. Then, he delimbed and debarked them before he brought them back to continue his progress.

After that, his trips into the mountains were for something entirely different: coal. He’d discovered several small seams of the stuff on his previous explorations in the area, and it wasn’t hard to find one of them again.

The people of Ionia largely seemed to frown on the stuff for reasons that were as much related to the smell and to superstitions about how rocks shouldn’t burn, but Simon didn’t care about that. He just knew that hauling a ton of coal would get him a lot more bang for his buck than a ton of waterlogged driftwood, and he was all in favor of that.

It took months to set things up to a level where he was happy with them. Even then, it still wasn't as nice as his long-lost cabin, but that was fine. He was in no hurry, and the customers in this out-of-the-way place were few and far between. Sometimes, he might mend a chain or shoe a horse, but mostly, his days were his own to do whatever he wanted with, and he spent much of that time sketching, though occasionally, after everyone went to bed, he would do some magical experimentation.

Most of his art projects involved charcoal and a whitewashed wall that he would scrub after each attempt as he erased the face he had worked so hard to create. Paper was expensive, after all. The experience was ephemeral, but then, that was the point. He wasn’t trying to paint something that would hang in a gallery. He was trying to replicate the tiny features and imperfections that made someone seem like a real person rather than a plastic surgery victim or a cartoon character.

That was the only way he’d ever be able to use magic to disguise himself, and that was an ability he badly wanted. As much as part of him liked the idea of every city he saved having a different statue of him, he was fairly sure that people like the Unspoken would put that together eventually, complicating future levels.

“I’ll also need it if I want to go for a seamless transition between old me and new me,” he said aloud as he sketched. “Though, I’m not sure that’s the best approach.”

Up until now, he’d been pretty honest with Elthena, and he wasn’t sure he could bring himself to lie to her like that, pretending that the old Simon had just slipped through her grip and come right back to the palace. He didn’t even have teleportation magic yet. He was working on it, though.

He’d tried two experiments with words of distance. In one case, he’d used Dnarth Celdura, and in the other, he’d used Dnarth Zyvon. But neither had gone as intended. In the former case, the rock he’d tried to teleport from one spot on the beach to another a few feet away had seen the thing disappear, never to return, and in the other, the thing had simply exploded, piercing his arm with shrapnel in several places.

He planned to do more experiments on the subject, but those would have to wait for inspiration to strike. There were always other projects he could work on.

One that he had given a lot of thought to but not actually done yet was to try using his least favorite word in a slightly more positive way. Zyvon was dangerous, but more than that, it was addictive. Simon was hopeful that if he channeled a lesser word of transfer through something else, though, like a blade, it might mute those effects. If he wanted to live a long life that involved any magic at all, then he was going to have to find a way to balance between the amount of energy he harvested and the amount of energy he burned.

Still, something stopped him there, and the only move he made toward it was to get better at making blades since that was never a strong point of his. Even after years in the dark forges of the unspoken, he was always better at getting the runic inscriptions on the finished weapons than he was at making them.

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Still, as his reputation grew, he started to get more customers, and people visited him rather than making the trip all the way down the coast to the city. It was about that time that the volcano finally erupted.

Simon had hoped to learn to teleport before that happened so that he could go watch himself battle the lava beast, but that was not to be. Instead, he stood on the sand with everyone else while they wondered what was going to happen. Some argued that they should flee immediately. That they should take their fishing boats and get as far away as possible.

Normally, Simon would have agreed with such sensible advice, but this time, he stayed where he was and told everyone, “It’s likely just a small eruption. It will be no more than that. You’ll see.”

From where they were, that was all it looked like, but Simon’s memories helped him remember more than anyone else could make out. He saw the lava spill over the near side of the rim to save the town, and after that, he saw a slow tendril of it rise up that he knew must have been that awful lava titan, even if it didn’t look like anything from here.

Still, he knew. Even while everyone else talked and pointed excitedly, he remembered what it was like to make that long fall to the ground. It was worse than he thought it would be, and truthfully, it was more than a little traumatic to relive all that. He kept thinking about the evil version of himself he’d encountered, and the fight that had left him basically crippled. Both of them were impossible images to get out of his mind. After the eruption fizzled out half an hour later, he went and got drunk for the first time in a long time on the cheap white wine that was so common in the region.

The following day, after he’d used a lesser word of cure to eliminate his hangover, he finally announced that he would take on an apprentice. This was something that he’d been asked about more than once during the last few months, but it was always something that he pushed away because he had no need for an extra set of hands.

Now, though, he had a need. He was on a timer. A few years from now, he would leave this village, and he decided that it would be wrong to leave them empty-handed. Fortunately, there was no shortage of applicants. Almost every boy in Olven’s Narrows wanted to do something besides be a fisherman.

He gave each of them a brief interview, both to find out what they knew and why they wanted to do this work. Most answered with some version of “I want to learn a skill so that I can leave this tiny nowhere place and go somewhere important like Ionar.”

All of those boys ruled themselves out immediately, without knowing it, but even after that, there were still a few contenders. Simon eventually went with a boy named Niko, who was a good choice both because of his powerful build and because he wanted to learn a skill so that he could provide for his widowed mother. Both of those were excellent reasons to take the time to teach him how hot the fires needed to be and the skills he’d need to be successful. Truthfully, he probably didn’t have enough time to teach the kid everything he needed to know. In three to five years, he planned to move to the city to be ready for his eventual exile, but that would still be enough to give the kid the basics.

He also added swordplay to the kid’s curriculum, just because, it was always a good skill to have. This close to Ionar, there was never likely to be any trouble, but even so, the strong needed to protect the weak, and he had no doubt that a few years swinging a hammer would turn Niko into the strongest young man for miles around.

Most of the time, he helped Simon with other smaller things, like going into the upper hills of the Raiden Mountains to fetch more coal. Other times, when Simon didn’t have a job for the boy to watch or help with, he would send him off to fish for their supper while he sketched or planned.

The most welcome part of this life so far was that he’d entirely gotten over his aversion to seafood. It had been so long since he’d had it that he’d actually missed it, and once he got his hands on salt and citrus fruits, he was able to make some amazing things in his tiny, barely functional kitchen.

It was at dinner time that Niko would ask him the most questions. Those started off with questions about Blacksmithing but usually ended up with some story about one of Simon's adventures or some physical principle that was largely unknown to even the educated of this world. He taught the boy bits about herbalism, and eventually, he even taught him to read, though Niko showed zero interest in it.

“Why should I read a book when I can just ask you?” he laughed. “You know everything, and I don’t even know how you do it!”

“There’s lots of things I have yet to learn and some things I have already forgotten,” Simon admitted. “No one can know everything. I don’t know how to mend a net or fish with one. I don’t know how to build with stone or even how to paint.”

“Your drawings are very good,” the boy insisted. “You could paint if you wanted to. I think you just like drawing in the soot too much.”

That at least made Simon smile. He’d grown to love the ease of his medium. Though he would have preferred to use paper, the way he could blend charcoal together really had become a form of painting to him. That was what allowed him to get past the lines he’d been hung up on for so long and into the shapes and values of images.

He hadn’t yet tried to remake his face in disguise, but he planned to when he left the city, though he hoped to find a leaper or a cripple to practice on first. It would be a fair trade. He’d find someone to fix, and in the process, he would be sure he wasn’t about to turn himself into a hideous freak. Everyone would win.