Once Simon realized he wasn’t where he expected to be, it only took a second to figure out where he’d ended up. The dregs of the wine still in his system slowed him down, but only a little, and he decided against a word of lesser curing to dissipate the poison.
There weren’t exactly a lot of levels that led to dark forests. Somehow, solving the volcano level had reset this one. In fact, now that he was thinking about it, he was pretty sure it wasn’t even the first time that had happened.
“This is the fourth time I’ve been here?” he asked himself. “The fifth?”
It didn’t matter. He could check the mirror to find out, but right now, the number of times he’d saved these kids didn’t matter nearly as much as saving them again. This time, Simon didn’t guess which way to go. Instead, he pulled out his dowsing rod and, after focusing on the children and their ruined wagon, slowly turned until he felt the carved stick pull lightly in his grip. Then, he put it away, drew his sword, and charged off into the night.
As directly as he traveled, though, he didn't get there before he found one of the big ugly birds. That surprised him, even though it shouldn’t have. It surprised the owlbear too, and Simon they both turned in time to see each other. Simon drew his blade even as he sprang backward. A sword was not his preferred weapon for a monster this large, but he was determined to avoid using magic unless absolutely necessary, so he resisted the urge. Instead, he waited for the thing to charge at him before pivoting behind a tree and letting the thing charge past.
Simon was too slow to hamstring it as he intended. So, he did the next best thing and continued his swing, bringing the blade down at an angle that sent the tree tottering toward the beast. It charged again but never reached him because, this time, half a ton of wood crashed down on top of it. That wasn’t enough to kill it, but it was enough to pin it to the ground long enough for Simon to finish it off with a single thrust to the brain.
That stopped its outraged squawks, but the muscle tremors continued a while longer. While those died down, Simon stood there, holding his breath as he waited to see what the noise would bring. For a long moment, there was only silence, and Simon muttered, “Come on, motherfucker. I know you're out there.”
That silence wasn’t broken by the sound of an eight-hundred-pound apex predator, though, but by a child’s shrill screams not so far away. That sent him running again, sword in hand.
“Wrong damn one!” he growled, crashing heedlessly through the underbrush. He’d thought that this time, he’d finally headed that one off, but he’d killed the one that would end up killing him in a few minutes.
At least, he hoped that was the right one. I’ll check for more owlbears as soon as the kids are safe, he promised himself as he charged into the fight.
That part went right, at least, though fight might have been a bit strong of a word. The owlbear was just as distracted as it had been last time, but this time, he had a magic sword that could slice right through pretty much whatever he wanted. So, it just took one slice through the thing’s lumbar vertebrae to paralyze it.
Simon would have chosen the cervical vertebrae for the quick kill, but he remembered how much the damn bird weighed, and he didn’t want it to crush the kids. So instead, he let the thing squeal and rage and claw pathetically across the road after him before Simon pinned it to the ground with his blade right through the skull.
Then, he released it and retrieved his dowsing rod a second time. “Stay there, kids,” Simon said, trying not to show off his magic to them as he had the last few times. “Just making sure there’s nothing else out here that’s going to try to eat you.”
He spent a few seconds spinning in a circle as he focused on the predator he’d just killed. The two corpses he’d left behind tripped it until he refocused on living owlbears. That brought a few more tugs and trembles, but those were much smaller; there were a few more of these things out there in the woods, but they were much further away. They might have been miles. It was hard to say; Simon had followed faint signals like that when he was prospecting, but he hadn’t done much hunting with this magic.
“Alright, it looks like the coast is clear,” he called out as he put the thing away, “You can come out now.”
He expected a general reluctance, or maybe even silence, but what he didn’t expect was the sound of gentle sobbing. That was his first clue that something wasn’t right and sent him dashing to the overturned wagon. Simon crawled in there with the kids and instantly found the problem. Kaylee had been hurt pretty bad. If not for the fact that she was stroking Eddek’s cheek with her bloody hand, he would have said she was dying.
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She’d been raked across one side of her head, her face, and part of her upper chest with three long claw marks. She’d never been hurt in any of their encounters, though in at least one of them, she’d been replaced with a different servant girl entirely, which indicated she wasn’t the important part of all this, at least according to Helades. Simon didn’t care who was important and who didn’t matter at all.
He whispered the word of greater healing under his breath. He wasn’t about to worry about his clarity or lifespan when a kid’s life was on the line. He tried to heal the wound as cleanly as possible because it would be an ugly place to scar, but at that moment, his mind was on blood loss more than infection or anything else.
He took her from Eddek and said, “Go scavenge the other wagons, and find me some cloth to bandage her,” he ordered the boy. That was more busy work than anything, though.
“Who are you?” the boy asked, but Simon ignored that.
“Later,” he snapped. Less talking, more life-saving.
As Eddek bolted to obey, Simon turned to the girl and gave her another look to make sure he hadn’t missed any injuries, even if the wounds beneath the blood that covered her were sealed. “Don’t worry, Kaylee. You’re going to be okay.”
“You’ve got… you have this glow about you, mister…” she sighed. “Promise me you’ll look after Eddek when I’m gone, alright?”
While her second statement was understandable, it was her first statement that made him wonder, and he was tempted to ask her more questions that would reveal whether or not those were merely words spoken in shock or something more.
Simon shook his head. That wasn’t the point right now. There would be time for that later. “Nope. It has to be you,” he insisted. “You have to pull through, or he’ll be all alone in this world.”
Those words hit the girl like a slap. Her eyes widened at them, making Simon feel guilty, but only a little. He needed to give her every reason to live. Even if there was a fire in those eyes, though, eventually, they closed. That worried Simon until he checked her pulse and confirmed she lived. There was no reason at all for her to die at this point, but a greater heal could take a lot out of you as the body worked overtime to fix everything, so he didn’t begrudge her a nap.
When Eddek returned, he panicked that his maid was dead, but Simon reassured him. He taught him how to check for breath and feel her neck for a pulse while he bandaged her. She didn’t need them at this point, of course, but everyone would feel more comfortable about her miraculous healing if she stayed covered up for a few days.
When that was done, part of Simon wanted to continue the farce by looking for herbs that would help with the healing. Infection was only a very small concern now, but she might need something for the pain when she woke. Still, with so much carrion lying around in the form of shredded men and mounts, he decided it was best if they left. So, he picked her up in a princess carry and started hiking toward the miller’s home several miles away.
That trip was a quiet one that was largely filled with Simon huffing and puffing under the weight of the young woman he carried. She was slight and not much older than fourteen or fifteen, but she still weighed more than the orb he’d carried for so long. That contrasted pretty strongly with the last times he’d taken these trips.
Before, Eddek had always been psyched up by Simon’s magic and heroism. It had been impossible to shut the boy up. This time, Simon had to force him to talk, asking him questions regularly just to keep things moving.
Slowly but surely, the relevant facts came out. They were headed to Adonan for a festival and a ceremony. That was the capital of Charia, and Simon had been there several times, though he’d never set foot outside of the palace grounds because of all the murdering. Still, as he understood it, the place was much smaller than the capitals of Brin or Montain. It was said to be small even compared to Ionar and not so much bigger than Schwarzenbruck.
“Father feared treachery at the capital,” Eddek explained, “Hence why he sent me in his place. Not before it, though. He sent enough guards with us that wild animals shouldn’t have been a problem.”
“I’m sure your guards fought well,” Simon nodded, “But there’s only so much a man can do against a beast that weighs more than a mounted knight. If an owl bear caught me by surprise, I’d certainly be a dead man.”
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They took rest breaks every ten or fifteen minutes after that, both so that Simon could take a breather and flex his aching arms and so he could check on the boy’s worsening shock. Their conversation lapsed into uncomfortable silence at least twice that often.
In previous runs, Simon had intentionally kept the boy away from the worst of the carnage, but forcing him to gather cloth for bandages had apparently been a harrowing experience for him, and in retrospect, Simon regretted that.
This time, when they reached the miller’s place, Simon had to do little more than pound on the door and show him the unconscious girl before he was let in. It spoke well of the man that he threw away his very reasonable suspicions as soon as real danger was afoot. Simon found her a place by the fire and then got half a glass of brandy for a boy to calm his nerves as the miller sent his own wife back to bed.
It was only when both of them were asleep that he told the miller the grisly story of how he’d found them. “How utterly wretched,” the man said, drinking quietly as Simon talked despite the early hour. “So you’re their last surviving guard?”
“Me? No,” Simon shook his head. “I just happened to be there at the right time. Nothing more than that.”