He wasn’t in the s long before they struck. Simon’s only warning that he was utack was the spear that missed his head by only two feet, embedding firmly in a rge mangrove tree at head level not far from him.

  A lizard mahought with a touch of excitement as he raised his shield and uhed his sword. This was one of the enemies he’d been waiting for, he thought as he charged the creature.

  He regretted that decisiowo more emerged from the stagnant water beside the first, but not by much. After some of the awful floors he’d been through tely, it was o see something he could actually fight. What was he supposed to do against cold and disease? He was here to fight, and lizards were something that could fall beh his bde.

  That was the idea, at least. He took the spear in the shield, but apparently the lizards were freakishly strong, because the blow ripped right through the wood in a way the skeleton knights blows never had and gouged into the flesh of his arm deeply.

  Simon hissed in pain, but didn’t stop charging through the shallow water, and he beheaded the first one he reached in a vicious blow that he hoped would scare off its patriots. It didn’t though. Instead, as Simo his back swing carry him around the ohat still had its spear jabbed at him hard enough to pierce his leather armor, and embed the tip several inches into his guts before he pulled babsp;

  A dozehs ago, that pain might have been enough to make Simoreat, but now it just pissed him off.

  “You think that’s going to stop me?” he growled before he lu the thing. Its fellow warrior cwed at Simon, but those cws barely pierced his boiled leather. These things were certainly strong. They might even be dangerous in packs like this, but Simon was over a foot taller than them, and had a huge reach advantage. He quickly cut them to pieces in a series of frerikes that left him winded when he was finally surrounded by the bodies of the dead.

  Only ohe killing was done did Simon realize why they’d attacked him: he practically stumbled onto their crude encampment without realizing it. As he walked towards it, he quickly noticed the portal to the floor was hanging in the doorway of the closest hut. As he approached it, he realized that this camp was certainly big enough that this wasn’t going to be their only hunting party.

  That meant that he o be fast, Simon decided as he shoved the cloth he used for ing his cheese into the wound to slow down the bleeding as he winced in pain. Healing could wait until he was on the floor, but before he left this one, he decided that he wao send them a message of his displeasure, and began to wreck everything he could get his hands oween here and there.

  Simon didn’t think that toppling the totem was required, but after the way those scaly bastards had ambushed him, he thought it was the least they deserved. So, instead of going directly to the gate that looked like it led to a desert somewhere, he took the time to kick it over, and then just food measure he stomped on both the s that he found, crushing half a dozen eggs.

  That wouldn’t stop him from having to fight the things again the ime he came through here, but it would make him feel better about how much those dull spears hurt.

  “Seriously, wood? Even if I heal it, I’m never getting all those fug splinters out, you assholes.” he swore. “Would it kill you to ehe Bronze Age?”

  As Simon limped toward the gate, he noticed that his bandage had darkened noticeably too from the effort. He definitely o heal himself, but he didn’t want to do it here. Just being in the s made him feel un. The desert might be awful in a lot of ways, but at least it was retively sterile.

  When Simon got through the door, he stopped and took a look around. The pce had a real Athens vio it, he decided. Everywhere he looked, he saw lots of pilrs and stairs, along with a few broken cssical statues of warriors slowly being devoured by the desert sands. He had no idea where it was, but it looked like it had probably been a nice pce upon a time.

  There wasn’t much here to protect him from the elements, but that was fine. Simon just looked for the rgest building and started walking. All he needed was a little shade, and then he could cast a few spells and take a nap to take the edge off.

  He was flying through the levels again, and the st thing he was going to do was let some dumb Stone Age lizard mahe death of him. The only lizard he was willing to die to was a dragon, or maybe that Wyvern if he ever decided to try fighting it. It might be fun when he learned how to use the longbow, Simon thought cheerfully, trying to distract him from the pain in his side.

  That was win he saw it. Another damn lizard, crawling around the ruins not far from him.

  “Lizards? Two level’s in a row,” he whispered to himself quietly as he saw the creature rounding the er. “e on Hedes. Get creative already, is that so much to ask?”

  The thing was a squat, ugly thing that had more in on with a Komodon than a crocodile. It was uglier than both of them put together, though. The thing had six short legs ected to its molted beige and gray body. To Simon, the creature didn’t look a threat. It looked like it was dying.

  It hissed at him as he pulled out his sword and advanced.

  “Sorry, buddy, it’s you or me,” Simon said as he advanced.

  He needed somewhere to rest and heal some of the wounds the lizard men had given him, and he couldn’t do that with monsters wandering around these bizarre ruins. He never even got close to the thing.

  Halfway there, a third eye sprang open. It was deep purple and glowing, which was in stark trast to the other two that looked so milky that he thought that perhaps it was blind. Simon didn’t like the look of it, and charged, but he was too slow. A sed ter, the glow rippled out, reag him almost instantaneously. That’s when his body stopped responding, and Simon started tle against the paralysis that had been inflicted on him.

  Seds ter, as the lizard got closer and closer, he began to panic. He was going to get eaten alive after all, but it wasn’t the carrion crawler that was going to do it. It was this fug lizard! It was only then that he noticed a further problem. His shield arm was still in his line of sight as he stood there transfixed, but his hand looked strange.

  As soon as he focused on it, he uood why: the leather armor was still brown, and the shield still looked like it always did, but his hand had turned gray. Not gray like - he had some kind of disease, or he was starviher. Like crete gray. Like somehow the stupid lizard had encased him in a yer of stone.

  While Simon struggled to try to break through this strange effect, the lizard tio advance. Moments ter, its powerful jaws tched onto his leg and ped down. Simon heard the blow more than he felt it. He could feel a dull ache from whatever the creature had doo it, but he could hear the coating of stone shattering to get to the part that hurt.

  At least that’s what he’d imagined had happened.

  It was only wheoppled over into the sand that he realized his leg was entirely missing somewhere below the knee. He khat because he could see the lizard dev it at leisure not far from him.

  That was the least disturbing part of the whole picture, though. That wasn’t what made him start to scream inside his own mind while he y there in the sand. The leg that the lizard was gnawing on wasn’t just covered in sto was stohe fug thing had petrified him, and he was still stuside his body.

  It was the zombie level all fug ain, and there was literally nothing he could do.

  That meant that fug lizard wasn’t just any lizard, he realized. It was a basilisk. Suddenly everything clicked into pce. The statues. The six legs. All of it. A damn mythological monster had just ended him with a gnce? How was that fair? Getting killed a back to the like that would have been bad enough, but to be trapped inside your owrified body until it finished eating you? That was all kinds of screwed up.

  Could rock even really die, though, Simon wohe basilisk might be capable of crushing his body into little pebbles, but even if it did, would that be enough to get him off the hook and back to the cycle of reination he’d been stu for so long? Zombies died when they got shot in the head. How did statues die?

  For the better part of the hour, Simon watched the creature gnaw on his limbs as it broke them off o a time. It hurt, but it was a dull, muted ache. Something that he would have associated with a sprain, or ahesia, not with dismemberment. The real torture was uanding what was happening and knowing how long it might st.

  For a while, Simon was hopeful that the thing would rip his head off and end his suffering, but it didn’t. Eventually it got bored with him and moved on somewhere out of sight, leaving him ying in the sand at the foot of the temple he’d toppled from. From where Simon y, he could only stare at the dune covered horizon.

  Soon, boredom was a more irritating panion than the ache of his missing limbs. That gave him plenty of time to remember the other broken statues he’d passed by. At the time, he’d thought that they’d been just another part of the ruined architecture. Only now could he see that they were other warriors just like him who’d been caught unaware by that fug lizard.

  Day turned into night, and still Simed inside his own skull. He tried to cast his healing spell on himself, but it did nothing before he couldn’t speak the words. He tried to pray to Hedes, but whether it was because she couldn’t hear him, or she enjoyed his suffering, she didn’t respond. Nothing happened.

  All he could do was shift between rage and panic as he tried to think of some clever way out of this. He couldn’t though. Once again, he was trapped inside his head. All he could do was watch the arc of the sun across the sky, and the slow march of the dunes as the storms moved them every day, while he slowly went mad inside his skull.

  At first, Simon tried to keep track of the number of sunrises he was forced to endure, but he lost t before he even reached thirty. Sometime after that, probably weeks ter, was when he left eye became pletely covered by blowing sands that were slowly gathering around him.

  Until now, he’d been ed with frustrated rage that he would have to look at such a b view for weeks or months. It was only when his right eye became partially obscured by the rising sand that he realized a far worse fate ossible: he could be buried alive so that the Basilisk would never finish him. If that happehen he would have to endure ay alone in the dark.

  It was a chilling thought, but day by day that seemed to be exactly what was going to happen…

  Author's Note: If you are reading this, then thank you fetting this far! This is the end of this volume of Death After Death, but not the end of Simon's story. It will tinue in a month or two after I've had some time to work on other things and polish the outline a bit. Please let me know what you thought of the story so far and sider leaving a rating or a nice review if you e.

  While you're waiting you're also wele to give one of my other stories a try.

  Golemancer just came out a few days ago. It's a Gamelit story with systems, and a story that alternates between a vilinous [Dungeon Core] and the group of hero's that the story focuses on. Tenebroum is a different sort of take on dungeon core that focuses on a Lich bent on drowning the world in darkness.Letter of the Law is my lo running story. It's a cssitasy with steam punk aers that focuses on the main character and his quest for vengeanbsp;