Deus Necros

“I DO NOT FEAR DEATH! I WIELD IT!”

The shout cracked the air in the little study nook; the lamp flame guttered, then steadied. Power rasped against the warding of the lantern, a cat’s back raised and crackling.

“You don’t even have a say in your own life or death now,” Ludwig shook his lantern with the Lich inside it. “Don’t tell me about wielding death when you can’t even leave this lantern without my will.”

He did not raise his voice. The mildness made the barb sink deeper. The lantern’s glass fogged and cleared in a quick, angry breath.

“It wasn’t for the lack of trying,” the Lich said.

The sudden drop in volume brought the temperature down a fraction. Ludwig’s fingers stilled on the Codex.

“…”

He let the little question hang, not dignifying it with more.

“The usurpers, it wasn’t because we were weak. Because we couldn’t control ourselves in front of them. You’ve met the Fanged Apostle… you saw his hunger… that’s for simply dabbling with Gluttony.” The lich said, his voice tinged with regret.

The confession crawled out grudgingly, words dragging old chains. Thomas tilted his head, curiosity pricking through his usual mockery.

“Excuses, I’ve met Gluttony and Wrath, nothing like that happened.” Ludwig said with a shrug

Ludwig’s memory flashed, The people of Tibari and their endless hunger for slime that neither filled them nor chased away their hunger, the furnace-roar of wrath’s aura, and the way his own dead nerves had held like iron. He pushed the images back down with effort.

“You’re an undead.” The Lich said casually.

“So are you.” Ludwig replied in a jab.

“Now… not before, not when I had the mission, I was alive and breathing, I had a heart, I had emotions too, when you stand in front of them, they’ll move your deepest desires and your most wretched wants and use them against you. You’re nothing but a husk without sensation or feelings, thus unaffected by them.”

The tone had changed: not plea, not pride, but a kind of bitter education. The words carried the texture of someone explaining a madness to the sane and being disbelieved.

“Then how come you didn’t bring down the Usurpers when you too became like me, and don’t tell me because you just didn’t feel like it.”

Ludwig kept pressure on the seam. If there was a truth to pry up, this was where the edge of the blade should go.

“You wouldn’t understand. No one could… just keep bashing your head against that wall, eventually you’ll find out the truth, when it’s too late hopefully…”

The final word was a small, mean gift. The voice thinned again, retreating into its brass cave.

The Lich simply turned quiet after that.

Silence thickened, close and watchful. Thomas’s outline flickered once, then steadied, his mouth set in a line that suggested he was thinking for a change.

But that was progress, after all, since he was trapped inside the lantern, the lich never spoke, for five years. This was the first time he said something. Ludwig was glad, that was progress.

He let relief pass through him without showing on his face. Even a grudging enemy’s voice was a tool; a crack lets in information as well as air.

“Anyways, let me think up a way to solve Master Van Dijk’s riddle, what do you think Thomas, should I use aura?”

He flipped to another schema, eyes scanning for shapes that could be stretched into movement. His shoulder ached where the blunted hail had rung bone.

“He forbade you from using any forms of swordsmanship…”

Thomas floated a finger wag with schoolmaster smugness. The reminder came like a chalk tap on the knuckles.

“Quite the doozy, I’m really stuck here,” Ludwig said as he flipped through the pages of the Codex all the way to the first page.

The vellum whispered under his thumb. Margins bore tiny marks, his, not the lich’s, breadcrumbs through a forest he was still learning how to walk. He exhaled and let his breath flatten a curl in the paper.

Only then did he remember something, “Salem.” He muttered.

He spoke the name under his breath, not as invocation but as if calling to a creature dozing on a high beam.

And immediately the page where the feline creature that inhabited the book shuddered, two golden eyes with a slit down the middle opened up from the darkness of the page.

The ink rippled. From the black between lines, two vertical pupils sliced into being, gold bright as coins catching lampfire. They blinked once, slow, unimpressed, then narrowed to an attentive gleam.

“Mind giving me a hand?”

His tone tilted toward coaxing without quite becoming plea. He lifted his palm a little from the parchment, leaving space for a choice.

Suddenly a low mewl came out and the feline creature emerged out of the book.

It unscrolled from the page like smoke made fur, shoulder first, then long back, then tail. The book did not bulge; the cat did not weigh. When the last of it shook free, it sat primly atop the Codex, tail wrapped to toes, and looked at Ludwig as if he were a servant late with supper.

This time it shaped itself like a black cat instead of its larger form.

Sleek as shade, ears fine-tipped, the creature rolled one shoulder and stretched, claws clicking soft against leather, then settled with offended dignity.

Suddenly Ludwig’s lantern shook, “An Umbral Hound? No… a mutated one. When on earth did you find this?”

The Lich’s alarm pulled a thin thrill along Ludwig’s spine. Curiosity had cracked the door farther than insult. The lantern hummed, a fretful bee trapped in brass.

Ludwig’s lips curled up a bit. Seems that the Lich is still willing to speak. Good, progress is good…

He let the smile show now, small and private. He reached to scratch Salem once, briefly, between the ears. The cat did not purr. Its eyes narrowed as if measuring him for a later debt. Outside the study’s little circle of light, the tower breathed its deep, slow, patient breath, as if listening to all of this and remembering.