Deus Necros

The second was a bit far away so Ludwig didn’t make it in time for his head, horns surged out like those of a demon, a deformed one at that too, incomplete, his eyes were the color of piss, and had square irisis, while his jawbones sunk and his whole body grew in size but not in density, a skinny looking creature that abandoned all humanity, jutting bones from his whole body gave him the air of an abomination abandoned by nature. Tail with spikes and had the texture of metal emerged out of his back, while his fingers grew the length of daggers, his tall form seemed about to collapse on itself as he curved his whole body forward like a tall hunchback.

The growth was not a blossoming; it was an argument with the body’s plan, and the body lost. Edges pushed through where skin ought to have smoothed, joints bulged without purpose, tendons stood like ropes badly retied. The tail dragged a metallic rasp along stone, the spines singing a dozen small, eager notes. When he breathed, the air moved strangely around his teeth, as if not all of them agreed on where to belong.

While his lower jaw seemed to extend far further than his upper one, growing teeth the sharpness and shape of a shark.

Spit ran along those serrations in thin ropes, hissing when it touched the ash-pit near his feet. The square irises ticked, one, then the other, as if they each chose their own focus.

“Ho… now that’s interesting, I’m sure the commander would like to have your head on her wall,” Ludwig said as he pointed Durandal forward.

He set the blade as a line in the air between them, not threatening so much as naming the measurement that would soon be reduced. The boy bound near the stone hill did not move; his remaining ear trembled once and went still. Perhaps the new appearance of his kidnapper was a sign that he was living a nightmare, a nightmare that his mind couldn’t understand so it simply decided to give up and drop him unconscious.

“No one who saw this form lived to tell tales about!” the words sounded slurred and deep as if a dozen people were speaking at once. “Now Die agent of the empire!” the man, no, half demon said as he jumped at Ludwig.

The voices braided and unbraided inside the shape of his throat. He leapt, long and elastic, tail whipping for balance, spines humming.

The first swing was obvious, broad and wide, so simple to duck under, Ludwig wasn’t even intending to block as he wanted a better opportunity to cut off his head.

He let the wind of it comb his hair, dropped his shoulder, slid across leafmold that took his weight like a friend, and felt for the low space where a neck might be invited to present itself. He did not hurry; he did not watch the claws, he waited for the next mistake.

However, the echo of the blow seemed to last longer than intended, a quick turn of Ludwig’s head and he noticed that the blow held more power than it showed.

The cut had written its argument into everything behind him: trunks opened from root to limb as if a great hand had torn them to see their rings, stones split along seams that should have held a century more, shrubs lay combed flat, their leaves cleaved and still falling in halves. The air vibrated where the path of force had traveled, a shimmering line that ended somewhere Ludwig did not care to name.

“You have time to look behind you!” Spittle flew with the jeer. His tail lashed, scoring shallow furrows into the stone hill as if to sign his name upon it.

The second swing came down like the wrath of thunder itself, Ludwig hastily raised Durandal up, clashing force with force. Impact cracked the quiet wide open. The shock went down Ludwig’s arms and into his spine, where it rang the ribs like a bell. Durandal did not cut through the fingers it should have. It sparked as if steel met steel, The demon’s talons held like worked iron, their inner light flaring more and more with each scrape, a furnace-glow seen through narrow grilles.

Ludwig grunted, for the first time in a long while someone was able to contend with him in strength. Ludwig shoved the creature back and it staggered back a few paces, it laughed and leered at Ludwig “The finality of your life is approaching! Praise be to the Sun!”

The laugh bled in and out of several throats. The praise carried the old heat of a faith that liked its altars piled high, with corpses too perhaps. He rocked back on his heels, shook the sting from his forearms once, and smiled without giving teeth. The smile however wasn’t that of humor but of an underlying issue that Ludwig seemed to finally realize.

“What’s wrong Ludwig?” Thomas asked. The question came quick, tight, pitched under the clash so only one man could hear it.

“I don’t know, this thing shouldn’t be this strong…” Ludwig replied mentally.

The thought went along the bone the way vibration travels through a blade. His mouth did not move. He measured his next angle by the way the demon’s shoulders stacked over its hips.

“It’s not that he is strong,” the Knight King said, “It’s you who grew weaker. Seems like The Wrathful Heart gave you a pseudo life, but it took away your Undead Strength.”

The assessment was not unkind. It sat down in Ludwig’s mind and folded its hands. The Knight King’s voice had sand in it.

“Shit, that feels like a hard nerf…” Ludwig said. He did not let the bitterness into his grip. He let it out as air, flat and dry, and set his heel again.

“It’s neither,” the words this time came from the Lich. “You’re in a place where your Undead Nature is almost sealed, you shouldn’t be pushed back by the likes of these people, not for someone who contended strength with the Wrathful Death himself. This Forest is passively sapping away your Undead Strength.”

The lantern warmed on his belt in faint agreement with the pronouncement, as if the dead inside it approved of the forest’s old magic. Ludwig could almost feel the law of the place written into the damp, into the bark, no dead shall rule here.

And the preparator, none other than the ancient dragon of life. After all, Ludwig is the antithesis of that very same entity.

“Fine,” Ludwig said, this time vocally, “Let’s see your real appearance now,” he added, this time his words were pointed at Durandal.

He angled the weapon a fraction, an invitation, a command, a hand upon an old pact. The syllables did not flare; they settled, like a seal pressed into cooling wax.

“Finally have lost your mind in the face of death? Unfortunately for you, Sword mage, nothing can pierce this skin, nor can low tier magic even harm this body! A flimsy attempt at mediocrity in both paths! You will eventually die!” he jumped at Ludwig.

The demon committed, mouth widening with the certainty that had carried him through alleys and deserts and now into a forest that wanted none of this, but would record it perfectly.

“Die? Me?” Ludwig smiled, “That’s pretty Hopeful of you,” Ludwig said as he propped his sword to the side with one arm. He set his elbow as if leaning on a rail, casual as a man waiting for a ferry.

Immediately an Aura of pure red wrath and rampage shot out from within Ludwig, a single heartbeat of the crystalline heart of Wrath inside his chest surged a mighty energy that engulfed Ludwig whole. Horns the texture of rubies grew out of Ludwig’s forehead, while his weapon, which was nothing but a shard elongated further, growing thicker, larger and far more deadly than anything ever before. The air took a step back. The red was not flame; it was pressure and anger given color. It poured along bone. Ludwig’s horns did not break skin; they declared themselves through it, polished facets catching no light and yet glowing. Durandal drank and answered, metal unbending to its elder memory, length and breadth unfurling like a banner taken down for war. The ground under his boots creaked, not from weight, but from the idea of weight. A world shattering weight.

[A partial portion of Durandal’s Original power returned to it]

The notification strode across his sight crisp as a roll-call, and with it a clean, bracing certainty snapped into place along his arms and into the wrists. The hilt fit him as if the space between his fingers had been made for it first and his hand later.

The notification was a sudden joy to Ludwig’s eyes.

The curved sword was almost as big as Nightbreaker, a gigantic slab of steel and rubies that wanted to cut the world in half. The weight of the weapon would have crushed any normal mortal the moment they tried to carry it. But for Ludwig who’s body was now reinforced with Aura and not Undeath energy it felt like a feather.

Balance shifted forward by a hair; the tip did not waver. When he breathed, the blade seemed to breathe with him, expanding a fraction, relaxing, eager to be shown a straight line to travel.

Durandal was ready for blood, oh so long awaited reveal. Finally the blade carved from the heart of a star saw its former glory once more.

The moment the demonic creature saw Ludwig’s form, the horns which looked far too similar to his only Ludwig’s were more… refined, more extruded, and he aura that shouldn’t have belonged to someone who was neither good at magic nor swordsmanship was right in front of him, the reality of the world seemed to come crashing down like a torrent.

Recognition struck him the way cold water strikes the chest: a stutter, a lurch, the heart briefly forgetting how to proceed. He had thought himself monstrous; he had thought the pill had led him near the apex of some pyramid of terror. Now the shape at the top looked down, and the slope between them unrolled steep and clean. He was no longer predator. He finally realized it, since the beginning, he has and always been nothing but prey.

He felt it deep into his being, he was going to die here. The knowledge did not argue. It set its hand on his head gently, and his knees understood before his pride did. Fear and terror gripped at the demonic form, shaky and mortified. The light of victorious hope in his eyes seemed to dwindle with every passing moment.

“Now tell me, how does it feel? That fleeting hope of yours?”