Ch. 465 - Love is for Life

That wasn’t the only hard answer that Simon gave Millie that winter. Even before she started to show with their second child, their after-dinner routine quickly became story time in front of the fireplace in the hours before bed. Simon had lived many lives, after all, and as time went on, he tried to hide less and less of that from her.

Instead, he told her little snippets that related to whatever he’d been researching that day, and she endured each strange new revelation with a mix of stoicism and wonder. One day, he told her about the printing techniques needed to make the Charian book in his possession, which, of course, led to a long discussion of their trial-by-combat-fueled legal system.

She was technically Charian, even if Brin claimed the land now, but the lowlanders lived different lives than the clannish highlanders, and she knew little of their ways. So, details about how might made right blew her mind. After that, they discussed the way the politics of the mountain clans worked, as well as the clanholds, and how they differed from both lowlanders like her and the Murani horse tribes.

Simon even told her about the witches and witch marks. He made it sound like a story to avoid the worst details. Still, he did eventually admit to killing a few, but he kept the horrors of what they’d done vague.

Before Simon knew it, he had his map open every night and was showing her all the places he’d been. After dinner was done and the dishes were washed, she’d pick a spot, and he’d tell her about it. They discussed Leipzen, the capital of Brin, which she wanted to visit one day, but after a few weeks, they discussed the most interesting places he’d seen with his own eyes.

He told her about the distant jungles and the strange ziggurats of the Murani, and she suggested they might belong to the same people. “People with the same ideas about magic,” he agreed, but he didn’t go beyond that. He simply didn’t know enough about the place to say for sure.

More than anywhere, they spoke of Ionia. He even told her about the oracle’s mountain, though he left out the part where she actually did see the future. Instead, he focused on the beautiful architecture and told her about the time he’d spent as an art teacher.

“I’d love to visit it one day,” she told him. “It sounds so lovely.”

He promised to paint her a picture of the white city overlooking the sea one day, but she didn’t understand that he’d lived multiple lives. He didn’t go out of his way to explain it to her, not at first, at least.

She’d been very understanding of his magic, certainly more than most people would have been. Still, those details slowly dripped out until she finally asked about how long he’d been alive.

After Simon admitted that he didn’t know, she laughed, and it all kind of came out. He left out the parts about Helades and the Pit so as not to confuse her. He just explained that he was on a quest to save the world and would be reborn over and over again until he got it right.

Sadness swirled across Millie’s aura when he told her that, though he was wrong about the reason why, until she said, “I was so selfish to keep you here.”

“I used to think like that,” he admitted after a quiet moment of reflection. “I used to think that my quest had a terrible urgency, but how much urgency can there really be after such a long time?”

For a brief moment, he was tempted to tell her about the timeline he’d been forced to erase because of Freya. Images of a son he’d never see again, and the man he’d grow up into, flicked through his mind, but Simon pushed those thoughts away. It would be too awkward to explain.

Still, in that moment, he vowed that he’d never erase their life together. That narrowed the scope of what he might do in the future, and barred most intervention in the early levels that he’d been doing so much of lately.

Is that even possible, though?When I figure out how to go back in time and become my doppelganger, how will I keep from screwing all of this up?

For the first time in a long time, that thought gave him pause, and he slept on it. Normally, he only considered how interfering with the past might set back his progression, but then, normally, he had nothing to lose.

Found this on another site? Tell the author on NovelPhoenix where this copy turned up; they will want to know.

Perhaps that’s what turns me into evil Simon, he reflected as he lay in bed one night. He certainly felt like the easiest way to make him take a very dark turn would be to take all of this and destroy it.

That haunted him in the dark weeks that followed. While he’d succeeded in avoiding the topic of other women with his wife for a while, he was eventually forced to discuss that too, when she asked directly after a conversation about how Niko was like a son to him for a time went on a little too long.

“Have you ever had any children?” she asked, innocently enough. It was a question that was as innocuous as it was dangerous.

Still, Millie took it better than he feared she might, especially when he confessed that he’d never stopped his quest, had a family, and made a life with anyone else. He could tell that made her feel special, which was good, because that’s exactly how he wanted her to feel. Still, he soured the moment by spending too much time talking about regrets in his attempt to downplay the past.

“So even decades later, you still pine for these women?” she asked when he was done telling her about Freya, Elthena, and Zoa.

“No, not at all,” he answered earnestly. “The past is in the past, but that doesn’t mean I don’t regret the choices that I made. Those can linger for a long time.”

“That sounds very hard,” she agreed softly. “But I don’t think you can carry things around like that forever.”

“I can’t,” he agreed, “and I don’t. Not anymore.”

“Promise me you won’t carry me around forever when I’m gone,” she said after a moment.

“I…” He struggled with the weight of such a promise. In time, of course, he could grant it. A century in the future, he could leave the past where it belonged, but if she died right here, right now? “I’ll try,” was the best he could offer.

“That’s not good enough,” she said, squeezing his hand with both of hers. “Love is for life… It’s for living. If you start treating it like a burden, then you might as well not have any at all.”

“I felt the same way for a long time,” he admitted. “And I admit, I screwed some things up. Pining for someone you’ve lost isn’t the right answer, but there’s no reason we can’t both stay young as long as we like.”

Worried about her soul, Millie asked how that would work, and Simon explained how life force was what powered magic. “I could reverse the flow, though. I could harvest sunny days or the summer heat, and we’d both stay like this for as long as we wanted. It’s not like I need to sacrifice someone else to steal their years; blood magic isn’t something that I’d ever stoop to.”

“While that’s good, I’m still not sure I’d like that,” she said quietly after reflecting a moment. “All good things come to an end. Would a summer be as wonderful if the hot days stretched forever? Imagine how awful it would be if I wanted to be a mother so badly that I never let our daughter grow up. That would be monstrous.”

While Simon didn’t entirely agree with her point, he did see her parallel. They fought about it after that. It was the first fight of their marriage, and later that night, the argument evolved into a passionate fling. It was only when that was over, and their emotional friction had been dulled by their physical friction, that the conversation continued. In the end, he agreed not to keep them young forever or extend their lives unnecessarily.

“I won’t let an illness take you from me,” he insisted. “Or our children, for that matter.”

“I know,” she agreed, slightly stroking his chest hair as she lay beside him. “We can have the best life ever, and I won’t complain at all, but remember. You’ve already carried me into the future, which makes me younger than my youngest brother. I just want one perfect life with you. That’s all. We can be happy together, and then when these lives are done, we can be together in heaven.”

Simon suppressed a sigh at that, not sure how true it would be. Someday, when I finish the Pit, I might go to heaven, but when I do, will I find half a dozen wives waiting for me?

That was a later problem, and instead of worrying what Freya would think about how he’d gotten remarried, he considered what it was that his wife wanted. She was okay with him using magic to make their lives better as long as he didn’t hurt anyone with it, but she didn’t want him to carry any more sins than those she already feared weighed on his soul.

She thinks she’s going to outlive me, he reflected with a smile as she fell asleep beside him. Some part of him wished that were true. The reality was that he was going to outlive everyone he’d ever met, over and over again. Even if he honored Millie’s wishes, he’d still have lifetimes to check on his children and their children before all of this came to an end.

60 levels left to get to the bottom, Simon reminded himself. That’s more than a century from now. What will the world even look like that far in the future?

It was a strange thought, but the fact that he’d probably get an answer was even stranger. If he tried to speedrun it, he could probably get another half a century further in a few lives. What would the most important cities of the region look like? Would they be conquered? Would they experience a renaissance or an industrial revolution? It was impossible for him to say, but he was looking forward to finding out.