Deus Necros

The demon didn’t even hesitate, it turned tail, literally and began sprinting away, clawing its way through the forest, panic and fear gripping its heart. It was going to die, it knew it, deep down, that today was the day it’ll die. He had to run, no matter the cost, no matter the what.

Roots were crushed against the pads of his feet and tore loose when he heaved forward. Wet leaves slicked his soles and sent him sliding into ferns that slapped his shins, cold and stinging. He could taste his own breath, sour and hot, filling his hanging mouth with steam that curled back over his teeth. The forest closed behind him with every lunge, trunks crowding, branches knitting back like ribs over a wound. His thoughts were not thoughts, only fragments jostling against the cage of his skull. Run. Faster. Away. He did not look anywhere but ahead, because behind him lived the outline of a death he could not name without feeling it happen.

Screw the Sun, screw the Queen’s command, if he stayed here, he’ll die to an even bigger and worse demon than itself.

The oath broke out of him without sound, a silent spit at everything he had ever obeyed. The Sun meant salvation for the pious and worshipers, but those guys haven’t seen this nightmare; it meant nothing in this green dim where the air smelled of sap and iron. The Queen’s will had always been a weight on the back of his neck. He felt it sliding now, useless, as fear sharpened into the small, hard clarity of survival. Orders were for those who lived long enough to receive the next ones. He wanted only the next breath and the one after.

The one with the Jeweled Horns.

The thought flashed like a shard of red crystal in his mind. Now the memory of that glinting shape in the dark gnawed through his chest. Ruby, not dyed, not forged, but grown. Horns that were not ornaments yet looked like them. The knowledge of that existence hollowed him out as he ran. After all, those very horns looked exactly like the memory he learned whenever he bit the on the pill. Horns that belonged to an Arch Devil.

It’s hanging jaws gasped for breath as it tore through the forest trying to get as far away as possible.

His jaw swung wider with each sucking inhale, tendons creaking, the hinge raw from panting. Wet earth splashed up into his mouth. He coughed and dragged more air in, only to cough again when a whip-thin branch cut across his tongue. The bark-skin tang of the cut mixed with the black taste of swampy rot he had kicked up. The ground rose and fell in deceptive hummocks, slick with moss, and he clawed with both hands to keep speed, pulling himself along when his feet skidded.

He didn’t understand yet how even with his metallic and armored body he was still receiving damage from mere trees. Not that he would ever realize that the forest he treated without care had now become his enemy. Where every shrub though looked easy to crush had leaves sharper than knives. All he was thinking about was escape and running away, run today to fight another day was the thought.

Yet nothing could have prepared him for what was about to happen next.

He had been ready for pursuit, for fireballs and spells from behind him or a weight crashing into his back from above. He had not been ready for the world to open its seam in front of him.

A sheet of black immediately opened up right in front of his face. He didn’t know what it was, but the feeling of dark mana coming from it gave him even more terror than what he was feeling.

The surface had no depth and all depths at once. It drank the light and gave nothing back. A hush came off it, heavy as a held breath, and the metallic skin along his forearms shook like a man’s hair would stand in times of fear. Dark mana rolled out like a tide drawn by a moon he could not see, and the cold of it slid between his ribs. His sprint stuttered, an instinctive recoil, then he gathered to leap because forward was the only direction left that did not have a memory of Red Horns.

And just as he was about to jump over and above it, an arm sprang out from it, familiar, very much so similar to the same one the boy had, the same boy he left in the dust not long ago.

The arm was human in shape, covered in gloves and a regalia too beautiful and elegant to belong to a deadly devil. It moved with a precision that belonged to something that had practiced killing for longer than he had practiced living. The recognition rotated through his mind like a slow-turning blade. The boy. The same build. The same quiet. Only this time the quiet held intent.

The arm sprang with the speed of a mantis catching prey, and it locked onto his throat in half a breath.

Fingers closed and the world tightened to a ring. His next inhale jammed against that grip and went nowhere. His heels plowed furrows, his claws grabbed loam and tore it in a useless scramble. Spots prickled at the edges of his sight.

“Fortunately for you, I can’t keep using Aura for long, so you won’t get to see much pain.” The words came from inside the canvas of black, and soon the two horns of rubies came out first, followed by the owner of the horns. Ludwig the boy, no, agent of the Empire emerged out, and without even batting an eye, or hesitating, pushed his sword right through the demon’s chest.

When the blade entered, it did not feel like metal. It felt like a decision finishing. A clean pressure pushed past cartilage and into heat. He looked down because the body always looks down at its endings. The steel was only halfway in, and still his legs were emptying of strength as if holes had opened in his knees.

Black warm blood poured out of the demon’s hanging jaws, pain flared out of his body. He won’t survive this, even with his inhuman regeneration. So, all he had to do was take down Ludwig with him, after all, The agent was nothing but flesh and bone, while the demon was steel incarnate.

The thought steadied him, a last island. He cinched what remained of a roar behind his teeth and pulled his arm back for a killing rake. Flesh and bone, he told himself. Split them. Crush the skull, rip the soft parts, use weight, use everything left, because steel lives by will and his will had not yet guttered.

The claws struck at the same time against the boy’s skull, however, there was a disappointing softness to the impact, like trying to stab standing water. His claws curved backward with a delicate, obscene ease. Bones snapped with little clicks that he felt in his wrists and elbows. The shock was almost worse than the pain.

“Hey, that’s gonna give me a headache,” Ludwig coolly said. Though it sounded more derision and mockery than a statement of fact.

The words found the gap in his bravado and sat there like small stones.

The sound of whimpering couldn’t be held down as the Demon cried out.

“Now then, that I saw your hope completely escape your eyes, you’re of no use,” Ludwig said.

The lift of the blade was patient and efficient, not cruel. Things inside him separated with a sensation more of relief than of rupture. Cold arrived where heat had been. The grip on his horn steadied his vision for a final moment, and then the world turned and fell away with the neck-stroke.

The last moments of the demon’s life were spent watching a smile that belonged not to a man, but something far worse creeping up the face of the agent of the empire.

It was a craftsman’s smile at a clean line cut true. The forest leaned in with him, as if to watch.

***

Ludwig took a step back and returned to where he was, right next to the boy who had his ear torn off. He placed the second head now inside his storage ring and finally got time to read through the many notifications that popped up in front of him.

The black sheet sealed like water settling after a thrown stone. Sap hissed where blood had spattered a heated trunk. He wiped the blade with a curt swipe and let the weight of quiet return. Only the boy’s thin breath, fast and high, marked the place.

[You have Slain a Demon-Kin]

[You have Slain a Demon-Kin]

[You have Slain a Demon-Kin]

[You have obtained Corrupted Brave Soul X3]

[Your presence was noticed]

The notification kept going down as and his eyes landed on the most important one at last.

The last line lingered at the edge of his sight like an unseen finger tracing his spine.

“Oh… seems like my movement was caught…” Ludwig looked around as if trying to find the source of the gaze, but he soon shook his head, “It’s probably the owner of these dogs.”

Nothing much he could do about it. They rambled on about their queen, and Ludwig had an inkling on who it might be. The Lustful Death perhaps. Only she can control a kingdom that already had a king for a ruler.