Deus Necros

“What’s this…” Redd asked. He was the first to notice, maybe because of what he is. His nostrils flared once, then again, as if scent alone could measure whether a man still sat inside his own eyes. The entity behind him seemed to also shiver, her ears were drooped and her fangs revealed like a cat alerted to danger. Though she was more canine than feline.

“What do you mean?” the prince asked. He too felt something off but could not place it, like a draft you sense without finding the open window.

“They’re… giving me the creeps, every one of them. It’s like, they’re here, but at the same time… they’re not,” Redd said.

Ludwig spoke first. “They’re soulless…”

[You’re in a hostile environment]

’Fuck,’ Ludwig cursed inwardly. He did not flick an eyelid. He let the thought sink like a stone in a still pond. It seems the Queen’s ears were very powerful if she could hear him all the way here. He could not implicate her, at least not in the palace. Not with the day liable to reset the moment a single word drew blood the wrong way.

“Seems like they suffered some nasty tortures,” Ludwig said, voice flat, almost bored. “The glint of life in their eyes is gone.” He drove the talk to safer ground, nudging it like a shepherd’s crook, turning the point away from names that would summon storms. It would be a bother to have to reset the whole day… again.

“Let’s keep going,” Ludwig said.

“Feels like you’re trying to hide something…” Redd said.

Ludwig gave him the eye, the one that said far more than the tongue ever should in halls with ears. It was a clear indication to shut the fuck up.

Redd understood immediately and nodded. He glanced over his shoulder, checking corners, checking the slow turn of a guard’s head, the way the mage-lights seemed to waver though there was no wind. Little did he know that the one listening was not standing in the corridor with them at all.

“Please keep a close foot to me, sirs,” the chamberlain said. He did not turn to confirm they followed. He walked as one who had traveled these steps enough to count them by the weight of his shoe on the stone, guiding them deeper into the dungeons.

They passed more cells. More faces that were not faces any longer. More breathing bodies that had stopped being people and settled into the husk that remains when will is hauled away. There were no outcries, no calls, no shouts. No bargains. No prayers. Only the small animal sounds a throat makes to prove it is not yet silent. A smear of drool here and there on a chin. Eyes wandering the dark like boats without oars.

The mage-lights threw pale rings on the floor. Between those rings the corridor seemed to fold on itself, as if the passage had decided to lean away from the company of men. Somewhere water knocked once inside the wall and then remembered to be quiet. Leather creaked. Keys murmured on iron rings. A guard cleared his throat and then felt foolish for making a sound at all.

At the end of the dungeon the corridor widened and ended in a heavy door set with bolts that had learned patience. A single cell beyond it was deeper than the others and framed with reinforcement that had been expensive even by a palace’s measure. There, a man was cuffed to the walls, wrists and ankles locked tight with chains that did not merely shine. They shimmered with a thin, crawling light that made the hair rise along the knuckles of the watcher. Sigils lay faint along each link, asleep until touched. The air around them smelled faintly of singed dust.

The man’s face was exactly that of Ludwig’s.

No wounds marked him. No bruise bloomed beneath the skin. The skin itself had the steady, living color that tells a guard when to look for knives rather than buckets of water. Unlike the others in the long corridor, this one had life standing behind his eyes, and that life did not bother to pretend to be humble.

“Ah, I guess the real one is here.” The man spoke.

“Leave us,” Ludwig said.

“Sir, he is a dangerous man.”

“Is he now?” Ludwig turned to the chamberlain. He did not raise his voice. He let the aura of wrath flower once, enough to set teeth on edge. It covered his entire body and pushed, a slow pressure that announced danger without clatter.

“I see, sir. Please then,” the chamberlain said at once. He inclined his head and drew back, but not before ordering a few guards to stand watch outside and keep an eye on things. They did not argue. They were careful not to look at the prisoner longer than needed.

The door was not locked. There was no need. Even the thought of crossing the threshold with those chains upon you felt foolish. Ludwig pushed it open. The iron breathed out a cold smell, and they stepped inside.

Ludwig inspected the man.

[Nagadal Ussii]

Level 220

HP: 0

Race: Manitou

Status Effects: {Sealed} {Glamour} {Fringe}

A creature from an unknown origin, it eats and devours dreams and fears to become what one fears the most. One shouldn’t simply gaze upon its eyes for they’ll see their own fears come to reality. The Manitou is an entity that cannot be killed, since it never lived in the first place.

“The hell is that?” the prince asked.

“That’s a Skinwalker… like… well, not like us, but close… I don’t feel kinship to it whatsoever,” Redd said, eyes narrowed, head tilting the way a wolf dog might when finding a scent that resembles home and yet refuses to be home.

“It isn’t a Skinwalker,” Ludwig replied. “It’s something different.” He crouched to bring his gaze level with the creature’s. “A Manitou.”

Immediately the creature jerked forward, as if to lunge. The chains did not so much pull him back as decide for him. They slammed him against the stone with a flat, sick sound and lit themselves. Light ran the links, and the shock that answered traveled his whole body and made his teeth knock once in his jaw.

The creature still grinned.

“That’s interesting,” Ludwig said. “I doubt Necros would leave something like you wandering this land freely. Still, let me ask you something… why me? Who fears me this much for you to take my form?”

“The hell is a Manitou?” Tull asked in the background, not loudly, not as a man who needs to be taught, but as one who likes names to match the weight in his hand. Both Redd and the prince shrugged. Neither of them liked what their shoulders felt like.

“Why…” the creature said. The voice had the texture of something that had learned words by listening outside windows. “Why can’t I change?” it asked again.

“What do you mean?” Ludwig tilted his head. He did not blink.

“I change to fit what the one who sees my eyes fears the most… yet… you… you have no fear. That isn’t possible. Only the Dead fear nothing.”

“What can I say,” Ludwig smiled. “I’m a pretty brave person.” He laughed once, a short sound to keep the air moving. Deep inside, he was already rolling sweat back with will. That was too close for comfort.

“Tell me,” Ludwig said. “Who did you meet for you to become… that?” He let the last word sit between them without drawing a picture around it.

“It wouldn’t be fun telling you now, would it. You’ll have to earn that knowledge.”

“Well, not that it matters,” Ludwig said. “I doubt you’ll live long enough to gloat.”

“I cannot be killed,” the Manitou said. “I fear nothing.”

“Killed. Who said anything about that.” Ludwig’s tone did not change. “It’s worse than death, and you must have already realized it. You can’t be killed, sure, but you can be made to wish for death. How about it. A body without memory, feelings, aspiration, hopes or dreams. A walking husk. Quite the miserable end for someone like you.”

“You can’t do that to me.”

“I know I can’t,” Ludwig said. He lifted his hand, bit his thumb, and pressed the blood to the stone. The smear was small, but it felt like it weighed a mountain. He wrote a single word that the air itself seemed to lean away from. ’Lust.’

“They can however.”

The creature immediately shivered when it saw the name. Whatever it had once been, it was old. Older than empires that believed themselves the first to build a road straight. Long life does not bring courage. Long memory brings an education in what not to do twice. It knew the smell of the Usurpers and did not pretend otherwise.

“You’re in its land,” Ludwig said. “And you know what that means…”

Ludwig chose each word as if he were picking his way across a floor rigged for traps. If he said anything that revealed the Queen’s position as the Lustful Death, the day would likely break in the middle and spill him back at the start. Dying to learn to mind the tongue is an expensive teacher.

“You wouldn’t dare… you’ll also die,” the Manitou whispered, staring at the blood on the floor as if it might write the rest of the sentence by itself.

“Well, not if I just walk away,” Ludwig said.

“Can you get me out of here even?” it asked. There was need there, but not the kind that begs. The kind that calculates the cost of standing where you are for one more hour.

“Now we’re talking,” Ludwig smiled.