Death After Death

Simon approached his assignment with great care. He looked at the book with suspicion from the first moment, and at first, he refused to even touch it. He was set up in a reading room that was thankfully free of bloodstains and body parts, but a brother of the Unspoken stayed with him and watched the whole time as he started his work.

Simon tried using leather gloves to look through the book from arm's reach, but they were too clumsy. So, once he opened and inspected the cover, he eventually settled on a stiff piece of paper to turn the pages. It’s not really the way bookmarks are meant to be used, but whatever, he thought as he got to work.

The thing was definitely a demonic text. That much he could determine even before he read the title. The whole thing reeked of sulfur, and though he had been assured that only living things had auras, he would have bet that this volume glowed darkly for those with the eyes to see.

The first page was blank save for a few suspicious stains, and the second only bore the title Librium Malifica. Interestingly, no author was listed or even implied. That struck Simon as odd immediately because, from everything he’d seen, mages and warlocks were very vain and often took credit for everything, even things they hadn’t actually done. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

This book had none of that, though, despite the obvious care that had been taken in its creation. Instead, it was written by someone who stuck to the facts as they saw them and wrote only on hell, the devils that dwelled within it, and their machinations.

‘There is only one end to the eternal cycle of reincarnation that we all face, and that is suffering in the great pits below,’ the book opened very clearly. ‘The devils know this. They know that in time they will get every man and woman that has ever lived, but they are impatient and will offer many boons to have a soul that much faster.’

Simon thought that was interesting since reincarnation didn’t seem to be an idea that most of the religions he’d read about ascribed to. It also happens to be halfway true, he noted, at least according to what Helades has told me.

Even more than what the introduction said, though, he was struck by the illuminated illustrations in the margins. Though the writing of the book wasn’t especially beautiful, someone had obviously taken great care in its construction. The flames that bordered the page like an elaborate Celtic knot were done in gold leaf and made this tome feel more evil than any of the others he’d read to date.

He continued, though, slowly, page by page, as he took in the words. Though early on, it described hell as endless in both size and depth, it eventually went on to categorize it into several sections and strata. There were then long-winded sections about what crimes were deserving of what punishment and who would end up where before going into graphic detail on exactly how they would be tortured for all eternity.

If Simon hadn’t actually seen into hell already, he would have thought this was a bad rip off of Dante’s Inferno or some particularly angry part of the Bible. As it was, he couldn’t say for sure. He ended that first day without any answers, though at least he didn’t die in the process.

Dying isn’t what I’m afraid of, though, he reflected as he watched the observer lock the book away in an iron-bound chest until he was ready to resume his reading of it tomorrow.

The fact that the second reader had died in a spray of blood told him little, but the fact that the first man had left behind a limb told him much more. He was fairly sure that those people weren’t simply killed. He was pretty sure that the book had, in some way, dragged him to hell. He was also pretty damn sure that if he suffered the same fate, he might never get out.

Helades magic had been content to let him stay a zombie for a year and a statue for a century. So, he didn’t think it likely that it would see the need to save him from a lifetime of eternal torment.

The book did say that those torments would continue until there was nothing left of the soul but suffering, and that it was that mechanism that powered all of creation, which Simon thought was a fairly modern concept, even if it had used archaic and religious terms. In some ways, it resonated with what Helades said about the Pit, which unnerved him a little bit. He wasn’t a big believer in coincidences anymore.

Could this have been written by my doppelganger? He wondered. It seemed foolish to blame everything he read on whoever that had been. There was no way he could anticipate Simon’s crusade against the centaurs and leave graffiti on the wall for him to find or write a whole book just for this moment. It was impossible.

But what if he did? He asked himself. Simon was still no closer to understanding how this book had killed its previous readers after all. So far, it was just a normal book. It was prettier than average and a bit spookier, but otherwise, it might have been a religious text.

That was what he fell asleep thinking about, and in the morning, he approached it with exactly the same level of caution he had the first day. Truthfully, he might have been even slower and more careful than he had been before. As the days went on, though, and he found no problems, he slowly grew less paranoid. It was human nature. He couldn’t stay on his highest level of alert for weeks on end.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The briefings he had to give only made it worse. Every few days, he would be called into the office of an inquisitor and asked questions about his research. Simon would give short answers, and then his minder would confirm those answers, as if spending half a year untangling a religious scavenger hunt and biting off his own tongue to join the Unspoken wasn’t enough to show his loyalty.

Each time, his answers were roughly the same. He told them how many pages he’d read, he noted the highlights, and he confirmed that he had yet to find anything suspicious. The book was certainly evil. It might even be true on some level, but as far as he could tell, it wasn’t magical. He had yet to read a single word of power in the thing, which was unusual because he knew for a fact that you needed those to bridge the way to hell and summon the creatures that dwelled there.

Truthfully, Simon could only take so many passages like, ‘And if you summon Glathran’azusu, bring on to him one goblet of good wine mixed with the blood of a goat. For deals with him are most fortuitous when he has imbibed. After that, he will give you anything you ask for related to animals or fields, though his price is sometimes quite high.’

Each demon had a name, a domain, a symbol, and dozens of other details that were supposedly important to their summoning. Thanks to level thirteen, he knew that demon summoning was possible, but he never planned to try it out himself. РАΝŎᛒÈṩ

It was in that lax, dismissive mood that he almost tripped a terrible trap. For the first week, he’d religiously used the bookmark to turn the pages. After that, he’d sometimes used his hand, but only very carefully. Today, he was reaching toward the edge to turn the page on Belthanrth and Vargarzeleth when he noted how the gilded patterns of flames on the edge of the page almost looked like a word of power.

He knew that he was just seeing shapes in the clouds, as human minds tended to do. Despite that, though, his hand still stopped, fractions of an inch above the page, and refused to move further. Something told him that touching the paper was a bad idea, and he listened to it.

Instead, he got paper and a quill and started sketching out the symbols that wrapped around all four sides of both pages. It was time-consuming with the materials he had, and he had to redraw them several times as he slowly but surely simplified them. It was enough that eventually, his minder took enough interest to finally ask, “What is it you think you’ve found?”

Simon didn’t answer him. He didn’t stop until he’d revealed the truth. Then, his only response was to stare at the page in horror. What he’d just drawn was a summoning circle in miniature. This section was the invocation that connected the world to hell, that was the true name of the demon that had been listed on the page, and this was the point that would power it…

And the point that would power it was just about exactly where his hand had drifted to. Had he turned the page, he would have temporarily activated a runic structure that would have opened a book-sized portal to hell. The moment after he did that, he might just have been dragged through screaming.

Real fear went through Simon for the first time in a long time. Compared to this, a dragon or a vampire was nothing, and he’d just found it and started reading it by accident while he was looking for a place to lay low and wait for a few years to go by so he could try things again with Elthena.

“Hey, Ennis, you’re acting strange, what’s wrong?” his minder asked.

Simon held up one finger, indicating for the man to wait, and then he used his bookmark to flip back through the last dozen pages. On every single one that listed the details of a particular demon, he found similar runes. In each case, they were patterned differently, and the contact point was at different points on the righthand margin, but it was always there somewhere, just waiting to be activated by the inadvertent touch of a human hand.

And I touched several of them… he realized as his heart hammered in his chest. How many had he turned? Where had he touched the page? He couldn’t say for sure, but in that moment, he felt someone walk over his grave, and it was several seconds before he could calm his breathing enough to pick up the quill and write the minder a message.

‘I figured it out,’ he wrote, not caring at all for once how ugly his handwriting came out. ‘This book is truly a fiendish trap.’

After that, he slammed the thing shut and vowed never again to open it again. Neither of them lingered in that room for long. Even before Simon could write a summary of what he’d discovered, he was taken to the familiar inquisitor to explain his findings.

As he started to do so, in the older man’s office, the minder who had been Simon’s constant shadow for weeks was dismissed. Simon had a bad feeling about that but did nothing to continue to write.

When the man finally read Simon’s description of what the book actually did, he paused, set the sheaf of papers down, and closed the door. This added yet another layer of privacy to the conversation and made the hairs on Simon’s neck stand on end. Something was wrong.

“You’re sure of this?” the man asked, looking from Simon’s notes to him and back again. “Are you even sure that magic can work like that?”

Simon nodded. Even as he did so, he felt like he was putting a noose around his neck.

“That’s very interesting,” the inquisitor said evenly, leaning forward and steepling his fingers together in a way that made him look slightly more villainous. “Shocking, really. Do you know how rarely a brother, or even an archivist, ever comes to that conclusion, even after they see magic items at work? It’s very rare.”

Simon nodded again, not sure what else to do, so the man continued speaking. “That revelation is also the reason that most archivists have to be put down, I’m afraid.”

There it is, Simon realized. He was almost relieved to hear it. That was what he’d been waiting for without realizing it.

If they cut out tongues to prevent their researchers from trying to cast spells or share secrets, then they were more than willing to go to extreme lengths to prevent him from doing exactly what he’d done. As soon as an archivist figured out that they could simply write or more properly inscribe spells, then they had to be put down.

Strangely, though, he didn’t mind. If this man was going to order his execution, he was inclined to let it happen. He’d had a good run, after all, and he wanted to document all this in the mirror in his cabin while it was still fresh.

So, Simon was even more surprised when the inquisitor said, “I don’t think that will be necessary in your case. All of our inquiries into your background have come back as positive as they can, and I can see just how devoted you are to the cause. I think it's time we use your talents for bigger things.”