Deus Necros

Without missing a beat, Redd jumped up and landed on the rooftop floor of the nearest building. His fingers found the rough lip of a window and used it as if it were a rung made for him. He located the source of the noise, eyes narrowing toward the west where the alleys braided.

But the guards were all shouting for him to get down and surrender. The torchlight pitched and swayed as men decided between orders and instinct.

“Follow me then,” Redd shouted, and soon jumped from one building to another. Rapidly rushing toward the source of the wails. His silhouette crossed a slice of moon and then was gone, the next roof taking him like a held breath released.

The guards didn’t lose track of him, and half of them remained with the prince and Tull, but the two other simply smiled and immediately followed after Redd, jumping into the air and onto the roofs of the short buildings, running across them like sprinting through an open field. The city’s skin changed underfoot, tile to packed clay to old wood. Clotheslines slapped empty air when they brushed them. A coop burst into feathers and indignant clucks as a hen flailed. Someone below shouted a prayer and shut a shutter with more hope than strength.

Not even dry and forgotten hanged clothes were enough to stop the three or stall them as they rushed past chicken coops on roofs, and through dried and drying vegetables and spice, or tanning leather that was left too long under the sun. The smells rose in a brutal procession. Coriander and smoke. Sweat and brine. The bitter sting of mordant from a dyer’s yard. Hot dust that tasted like old coins.

The three soon jumped down from the rooftops and landed on a street where several guards had surrounded it from everywhere. Metal struck scabbard. Torches threw wavering halos over pale faces. The circle had been made fast, but fear still leaked through its seams.

Redd kicked the door of the house that he heard the wails come from, only for the assaulting stench of tang and metal to wash over his nose. Blood, human blood was poured in this place. It came out of the dark in waves, thick, hot, and heavy enough to taste. The lamp by the door flared once and then lowered itself, as if ashamed to show what the room held.

The guards saw him and followed after him with swords brandished and this time ready to sever instead of serve. Their training moved into their hands though their minds had not yet caught up.

The guards then noticed the taken aback Redd as he didn’t walk in and only stared in horror at what was in front of him. His body had set to motion like a thrown knife, but at the threshold he locked as if a hand had closed around his spine.

The guards arrived to apprehend him but seeing his shock one of them was too curious as he put his torch in front of the door, seeing more than half a dozen dead bodies inside. All belonging to a single family, from father to the youngest toddler, and ripped to shred and torn apart. The floor wore a slick that had not yet decided where to settle. A doll lay facedown under a table with one arm missing. The hearth had burned low and gone black. On the wall, a smear of small fingers had reached and then forgotten how to reach.

“What the fuck did you do?!” the guard said to Redd. The words fell out of his mouth without his consent, and once said could not be gathered.

“Are you retarded? I just got here, the sound of the scream came from here.” Redd did not look at him. His eyes weighed the room, then the corners, then the ceiling, as if the dark could still be carrying someone away.

“HELP!” another wail echoed, this one was from the house behind them, but the wail was immediately cutoff. Perhaps forever. Redd turned. The sound’s direction drew a line through the air that his body followed before his mind could finish the thought. “Are you still thinking it’s me?”

“We need to investiga-”

“Ah, why are you conversing with them man,” the words were that of Tull who seemed too annoyed at how untrained these guards were, in his hand was a scimitar that he skimmed off one of the thugs earlier. With one gaze at the building in front of him, his eyes turned green and his body began shimmering with vital and powerful energy. It rolled off him in waves that made the dust lift and hang. The old wood in the doorframe creaked as if it knew what was coming.

The guards immediately realized what that was. Several blades lowered by the length of a breath.

“A-aura!” one of them said. The word came out half prayer, half warning. That was beyond their paygrade, these were guards that needed to tend to the people, the normal people, and stop any skirmishes and uphold order. But when a Swordmaster is involved, another type of guard is needed to come here and solve these issues. Even so, they held their line. The circle did not break.

“DUCK!” Redd howled. And as if it was an order from a superior, everyone in from the guards ducked down as Tull swung his sword, ripping apart half of the building in front of them and turning every stone and block of the top half into dust. The cut was not a shout. It was a clean thought made with steel. The wall separated into a cloud and a rain of broken things. Roof tiles spun like coins thrown into the air and came down in clattering agreement.

In that process of doing that, they saw a young woman being engulfed in shadows and darkness that was actively absorbing its blood. Her limbs fought without aim, the hands scratching air that would not hold her. Her eyes were wide not with terror alone, but with the knowledge that what held her was not a man and not a beast.

“Tch.” The sound was too human as it came out from the shadow who let the woman go and jumped into the nearest building. The shape unstitched itself and slid through the crack like smoke poured under a door.

“You still think it’s us?” Tull said. He did not wait for an answer. His blade lowered without hurry, his breath returned to an even tide.

The guards couldn’t reply. Their faces had gone to that gray that men wear when the world has turned its face and they have seen it. Swords stayed in hands, but wrists loosened.

“Get some higherups, things are getting too ugly here for mere guards to handle,” the prince said. He wasn’t their prince, and they didn’t know that this was the enemy prince, but something in the way he spoke seemed to move them. None of them knew it or realized it, but it was the blood of a royal commanding those below him that made them compelled. He did not need to shout. The words found rank and gave it orders.

“Yes,” one of the guards said and pulled a small cannister from his pocket. It was a red one that he pulled on a string from underneath. He set his feet, aimed clear of roofs, and sent it up. A powerful firework shot up in the sky, red and bright.

The flame rose in a straight hungry line and burst into a flower that hung a moment, bleeding sparks. The sound rolled over the district like a drum struck in the chest. And not too long after, several people seemed to almost manifest as they appeared out of nowhere.

They weren’t guards, they didn’t look like them, they wore armor and everyone of them had two curved swords in hand, their faces hidden by a cowl and wrap around their mouths only their eyes were visible. While the rest of their clothes were baggy and loose, they seemed to hold far too much presence for how little one could sense them. The air around them grew disciplined. Even the torch flames narrowed.

“The special ops are here!” one of the guards said. The relief in his voice did not make him smaller. It let him stand straighter.

And true to their names, just as they arrived they recognized the situation. They spared the ruined wall a single measured glance, the blood inside the house a second, and the cut line of Tull’s sword a third that lingered the longest. Then they began a hunt through the city. Signals moved by hand and eye. Pairs split and ran, feet making no more sound than cloth. More and more fireworks began blowing up in the city sky as they tracked the position of the fake Ludwig. The lights climbed and faded, and the city read them as if it had been taught this language since birth.

While the special ops began chasing after him in the darkness of the night, the ordinary guards tightened their ring around the street and began ushering neighbors back into their homes with voices that were firm without cruelty. Redd closed his eyes and listened. The false scent was breaking into threads, but under it the same old taste of stolen fear still clung to stone. He tilted his head a fraction to the left, as if hearing a voice far inside a wall.

“He thinks the rooftops are his,” Redd said softly. “He forgot the ground has ears too.” He opened his eyes. They were very calm now, the wildness tucked away and ready. “Follow close. If he dives again, I will feel where he means to come up.”

Tull nodded once, the scimitar’s edge dark and wet with crushed mortar. The prince looked to the nearest special operative, met an unreadable gaze through cloth, and gave a small gesture that meant the same thing in any trained tongue. The operative returned it. The hunt tightened. The city watched with all its windows. And the night, which had begun as a cover, turned into a stage where shadows could no longer pretend to be empty.