Death After Death (Roguelike Isekai)

She was a stranger to Simon. He’d never seen her before in this or any life, but he could see that she was a servant of the King by her badge, and the fact that her armor differed so wildly from the rest of the guardsmen he’d seen indicated she was something special.

A spy, maybe? he wondered as he considered his options. I could run deeper into the dark, but I’m as likely to get lost as to escape that way.

“Archiman always said that there’s never just one viper in the nest,” she growled at him as she leveled her blade.

That name sounded familiar to Simon, but he couldn’t recall if it belonged to the king, the former king, or one of his servants. It was definitely someone he’d dealt with while researching the Blackheart. So, for all Simon knew, it might have been the head librarian, but right now it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he’d pressed his luck too far and he’d been found out.

“I’m not who you think I am,” Simon answered politely, raising his empty hand to show he was unarmed while he continued to hold the tome he’d been perusing in his left.

“You’re not an acolyte to a secret diabolist?” she answered in a mocking tone. “You don’t raise the dead, you only loiter in the secret basements of those that do? Tell me another one.”

Simon nodded. She had every right to be skeptical, but then, if he’d been what she thought he was, she’d already be dead. Mages were notoriously hard to take alive.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t his unwillingness to cast a spell that tied his hands, or even the weapon that the woman in tight leather armor brandished. It was her bright aura that tied his hands. He could see at a glance that she was a good person, and that the world would be poorer without her, just because of how brightly she shone, which meant that if it came down to killing or dying, he’d probably die here. Still, he wasn’t done with this run, and he had no desire to lie down and end it right here, so he considered his options.

“Brave of you to come down here alone if I really am what you think I am,” he said. “Foolhardiness and heroism straddle a line so narrow only the saints might tell them apart.”

It was one of the many passphrases of the Unspoken, but she gave no sign of acknowledgment of its meaning. She wouldn’t have been a knight, of course, and she was too youthful to be a whisperer, but if she really was some kind of medieval secret agent, he thought she might know enough about them for him to bluff his way free. After all, he had once been recruited from this city. He knew that they had a presence here.

“I bear blessed tokens of protection from the gods themselves,” she smiled coldly. “That is why your charms and evil magics have not already worked their evil on me. Once the fighting starts, you can bet my men will come running to aid me. Now will you come along quietly so we can punish you properly, or will I cut you down here like a dog?”

So she’s not alone, or she’s bluffing, he considered. He’d been planning to take more books with him. Obviously, that was out now. The new question was how to get away without hurting her too badly.

Simon was fairly certain her backup was either a bluff or a poor setup. If her men were close enough to help her, he would have heard their boots on the floor above him. The woman had snuck in only because she was light on her feet and he’d been distracted. If there were a whole squad up there, he would have known.

Still, he played along. “The punishment I deserve is probably worse than simply being stabbed to death here and now, isn’t that right?” he asked. “Much, much worse, I expect. In fact, I’ll bet you think that Mr. Blackton got off far too easy, don’t you?”

She swallowed hard, showing how right he was, but eventually answered. “Go on, confess. You obviously want to. You knew the man, you knew what happened to him, and you even knew where he hid his blackest deeds. What else do you know?”

“I know that you’ve never met a real warlock,” Simon said, pacing slowly toward her. “I know that if you had, you would have shot me with a crossbow the moment you saw me. I also know that you’re a—”

“You know nothing about me,” she hissed. “Get back, or I’ll cut you down myself.”

Her sword was sharp, and Simon believed her, but he wasn’t worried. She might be skilled, but she was a head shorter than him and only a little more than half his weight. She was very little threat to him unless she had some cards to play that he didn’t see.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I don’t know your name,” he agreed, “But I can see you’re a good woman. I can see…” It was here that he regretted the blurriness of his vision. There were times when it would have been child’s play for him to pick out her hopes and deeds, but now he could only guess. “I can see there are people who would be heartbroken if you died. A little girl who—”

Simon was certainly trying to provoke her, and that was the moment he succeeded. She let loose a warning slash that he ignored as it went inches in front of his eyes. He side-stepped the first feint, too. It was only when she lashed out to truly impale him that he finally reacted, and obviously not in the way she expected.

Instead of trying to dodge, Simon held his tome like a shield, letting her impale it. Then, when he had control of her blade, he twisted it sideways, hard, putting all the force on her wrist because of the way it held her weapon.

She was smart. She didn’t try to get her sword back. Instead, she released it and reached for her dagger, but Simon had been expecting that, and used the spine of the leather tome as a cudgel, slamming it into her chest and sending her down to the steps of the stairs. He then gripped her trapped sword’s handle, aiming it like he was about to impale her.

The woman rolled free, off to the far side of the basement, circling to use the stairs defensively, and forcing Simon to suppress a smile. He’d been hoping she’d make the smart move, and with one more feint to put her on her toes, he dropped the book and charged up the stairs with her sword.

While he could have tried to escape into one of the many side passages, that was a terrible idea for many reasons. Mostly, it was because he was sure he’d get lost. He’d found exits, and even made a small map, but he doubted that this woman was going to give him time to find his bearings.

She followed, of course, but a few steps behind as she adjusted to the changing situation. “There’s no escape!” she yelled. “My men are right outside!” But by the time she reached the top of the stairs, he had slammed the secret door shut, sealing her inside until she figured out how to open it. While he was confident she’d figure it out, just to be sure, he stabbed her blade into the floor in front of the hidden switch, so someone would find her if worst came to worst.

He wasn’t going to risk burying her alive just to make sure the necromancer’s library stayed unread. He just hoped that he’d found all of those damn seals. He would hate to see a new form of magical slavery spread throughout the land.

When Simon exited the basement, he did indeed find that there were guards just outside the front and the back door. They stood in small knots waiting for a signal that wasn’t coming. So, he avoided both of them by going up to the second floor and leaving by the same window he had entered from. He almost got away clean, too. Only an observant guard prevented that.

He was hopping down the last few feet off the brickwork he’d used to climb up in the first place, and it was then that he heard the shout of alarm. Unfortunately for them, they were wearing armor, and he wasn’t, so even in the mediocre shape that Simon was in, he still managed to get away. At least, he did from the first group.

The real power of a coordinated city guard was that wherever you went, there were more of them, and every time he thought he got away, he stumbled into a new group. Still, he ran his pursuers on a merry chase until the sun peeked up over the horizon. He went over walls, onto rooftops, and through back alleys more than once in his bid to escape without killing any of these people.

What he really wanted to do was collapse the caverns below and bury the blasphemous research he’d found, but he wasn’t willing to kill that woman. So he decided to get while the getting was good, and eventually made his way back to his room. Once there, he was desperate to change clothes, but he didn't have a second set; that was just one more thing he hadn't gotten around to yet in this life. When he went outside to toss his ill-gotten necromantic tomes in the latrine, he snagged an old brown cloak from the stables that was as filthy as it was ugly. That was the best he could do.

They were looking for him, and they’d find him if he weren’t careful. So, instead of trying to learn anything else, he made straight for the graveyard.

That gate was guarded, so he started to loop around the far side. Unfortunately, that’s when he ran out of luck. He was trying to mind his own business when he noticed one guard pointing him out to his partner. After a short discussion, they both started to approach him, so he did the most logical thing in the world: he hopped the fence.

“Hey!” one of them yelled as he grabbed the top rail and started to vault the thing. “Stop in the name of the king!”

Simon ignored them and hit the ground running. Getting over the top of the fence was strenuous for him. He still wasn’t as strong as he was used to being, but they were wearing 40 pounds of chainmail apiece. That would have served them well in a fight, but in a footrace, it might as well have been an anchor.

Their cries spread quickly, including to the guards still at the site of the murder, but it wouldn’t be enough. The guards would hold all the exits, and in a sane world, they’d snag him, because there would be nowhere for him to escape to. It wasn’t a sane world, though; it was the Pit.

“He’s heading toward the temple!” someone shouted in the distance.

Simon ignored that and pumped his legs that much harder. He had to break down one door, and he’d be free. Let them fill up the temple with guards. Let them release the hounds if they wanted; he’d still get away clean.

Simon hit the door with his shoulder, almost hard enough to dislocate it. Fortunately, it gave, just like it had the other times he’d been desperately running from the fog, and he fell through it to the next level in an invisible flash of twisted magical colors. This time, it wasn’t a masquerade ball in Charia he was interrupting, though; it was just a dusty plain a couple of hundred miles from where he’d been standing.

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