Deus Necros

The night continued uneventfully. The forest held its breath in that awkward way it did when too many bodies were trying to pretend they weren’t there, no loud talk, no celebratory grunting, only the occasional shift of weight and the soft scrape of an axe haft being repositioned in the dirt.

Even the wind seemed to move carefully through the branches, making the leaves whisper instead of rustle. Some orcs who had been anxiously waiting to raid the camp ended up being the first to drop asleep. Snoring up a storm in the process.

Thankfully, they weren’t loud enough to be heard by the camp below so Ludwig didn’t wake them and let them have their rest. He could’ve slapped them awake out of principle, war camps didn’t tolerate slack, but principle didn’t win this trial. Timing did. Exhausted fighters made stupid mistakes, and stupid mistakes got you killed before you ever reached “king.”

Unlike him, Kaiser and Gale who were all undead though turned Orcs right now, they were used to sleepless nights. Ludwig sat with his back against a trunk, eyes half-lidded but alert, listening to the world the way you listened when you were waiting for something you couldn’t see yet.

He could still feel the mud drying in places on his skin, cracking slightly when he moved. The orcs’ scent masking had been crude and effective; it dulled their outline in the darkness and smothered the clean stink of foreign bodies in a forest.

Below, the settlement’s noise rose and fell in small waves, bonfire crackle, faint voices, the river’s steady rush, nothing that screamed alarm, nothing that suggested the lizardmen had found them. That was good. Good meant the plan was still intact.

The Lizardmen camp had subtle changes. A few of the champions that were rearing for a fight had discarded their armors and retreated to their tents, leaving but a couple Lizardmen to stand watch. Ludwig watched that shift as carefully as he’d watched the earlier patrol patterns.

Champions weren’t brave because they were fearless; they were brave because they trusted routine. If no raid came, they stopped wasting energy on armor and posture. They laid down. They relaxed. They became human in the dumbest way possible, assuming the night would stay predictable because it had stayed predictable so far.

The towers still held watchers, but the watchers’ movement grew lazier, heads turning slower, attention drifting. The settlement’s spine, its river, kept running clean and inviting through the middle of it all, and the lizardmen treated it like it could never betray them.

Then came the time where the poison began acting. The first was a Lizardman that rushed toward the river. He looked both drunk and about to be sick at the same time, holding a hand over his mouth and the other on top of his ass, as if doing that would stop what was going to happen.

His gait was a panicked stagger, fast but uncoordinated, knees knocking, shoulders hunched, tail jerking in short angry snaps like his own body was insulting him. He nearly tripped twice, catching himself on reflex more than balance, and the lizardmen near the nearest hut turned their heads in confusion at the sudden sprint.

Once the lizardman reached the river, he began retching all he had consumed. At first it was bits of food and meat, then it became nothing but bile. The sound carried farther than it should have in the still night: wet, violent heaves that made even a hardened watcher flinch if they were still capable of empathy.

The riverbank became a small stage of humiliation, and the lizardman’s body shook hard enough that Ludwig could see it even from the slope, shoulders spasming like he was trying to vomit his spine out through his throat.

Soon after, he couldn’t control his intestines and began releasing fluids from both ends. It was ugly in the most mundane way possible, the kind of ugliness that didn’t feel like battle or magic, just the body turning into a traitor.

The lizardman must have felt like it was the end of the world for him as he could barely control his digestive system, claws digging into mud as if gripping the earth would anchor his insides back in place. A couple of nearby lizardmen hissed at him, either mockery or warning, Ludwig couldn’t tell from this distance, but none stepped close enough to help. No one wanted proximity to a sickness they didn’t understand yet.

But, if it was only one, then it would be just a bad case of eating the wrong food. Nothing too serious. That was how the settlement seemed to interpret it at first, an embarrassment, a joke, something to hiss-laugh about when you were bored. A watcher leaned down from a tower and barked something that sounded like a crude comment. The afflicted one didn’t even look up. He couldn’t.

Then, a second lizardman came rushing in, the same symptoms and reactions. And then it stopped looking like a joke.

Some of the lizardmen on the watchtower took note of that, and began hissing some words. Though, it must have been either worry for their comrades, or perhaps laughter at them as they ate what they shouldn’t. Their reaction only changed when the third, fourth and fifth lizardman all came with the same symptoms.

One or two could be a coincidence. Three, four, five, and more, that’s a sickness.

Bodies began moving with purpose now, heads snapping toward the river, tails stiffening, a few lizardmen backing away from the waterline as if the river had suddenly grown teeth. The hissing from the towers sharpened into something tighter and faster, less amusement, more alarm.

And soon, even champion lizardmen began roaring out in pain from inside the settlement. That was the moment the whole place shifted. Champions didn’t howl over stomach cramps unless something was truly wrong.

Ludwig saw one tent flap burst open and a large figure stumbled out, posture rigid with misery, hands braced on knees as if the only way to stay standing was to fight gravity itself. Another champion emerged a heartbeat later, shoulders shaking, the proud silhouette reduced to something hunched and furious.

This confirmed it, this was no longer a case of bad food. This might actually be an epidemic. The settlement turned noisy in the wrong way, confused noise, panicked noise, people shouting questions at each other without answers.

Still, this wasn’t an attack, so the alert bells or horns were neither tolled or blown. That restraint mattered. It meant their instincts still categorized danger incorrectly. They were treating this as internal misfortune, not external threat, and that gave Ludwig exactly what he wanted: time.

One of the watchtowers had its light turn off, the lizardman that was stationed there seemed to also be affected. Then a second tower turned off. The darkness on those towers wasn’t tactical. It was collapse. Watchers abandoning posts because their bodies had become emergencies.

“It’s working,” Ludwig said to Kaiser, “But, diarrhea?” Ludwig turned to Kaiser. “I thought you’d do something more… lethal.”

Kaiser’s hooded orc form barely shifted, but Ludwig could feel the lich’s amusement anyway, that smug calm of a man who enjoyed proving that cruelty didn’t need spectacle. Ludwig wasn’t disgusted, he’d seen worse, he was evaluating efficiency. Poison was supposed to remove enemies. This was removing dignity. It was effective, but it wasn’t what he’d expected.

“I thought about it,” Kaiser said. “But, then again, you’re supposed to become king. What king rules over ash?”