Deus Necros

Ludwig hurled Durandal first. Something no sane warrior or fighter would ever do, unless they’re Ludwig.

The moment the blade left his hand, it cut through the air with a blunt, hateful whistle, not the clean hiss of a light weapon, but the sound of something too dense moving too fast.

Orcs around him flinched on instinct, not because they feared friendly steel, but because the throw didn’t look like a throw. It looked like a decision made by someone who didn’t respect normal limits.

Ludwig didn’t even watch it fly for long. His eyes were already measuring where his body would go next, what stone tooth he could plant off of, what angle would keep him from being swallowed by a mass of red muscle.

His sword was made of the core of a forged black hole. Though only a shard of the full weapon, it still carried some of its weight. A fraction of a fraction of its weight.

Even suppressed, even dulled by this floor’s rules, Durandal still felt wrong to the world.

It didn’t “slice” through space so much as impose itself on it, like reality had to make room.

The air around it trembled faintly as it passed, and Ludwig could feel the strain travel through his own arm and shoulder a heartbeat after release, like throwing it had tried to drag him along even before the chain did.

The butt of the hurled sword was linked to Ludwig’s Soul Shackles.

The impact was wet and heavy. Not a clean stab, but a puncture that sounded like meat being forced apart by something that didn’t care about resistance. The red orc’s roar rose immediately, more shock than pain at first, until Ludwig’s fingers clenched around the Soul Shackle chain and yanked. The chain snapped taut with a metallic clack that rang against stone spears.

The weight difference made Ludwig fling forward into the fray, jumping toward the shoulder of the pained howling red orc.

It wasn’t graceful. It was violent physics. Ludwig’s boots skidded once on damp soil and he used the slip as momentum, letting the chain do the pulling while his body committed to the trajectory. Wind slapped his face. The ground blurred. For a second, he was nothing but a projectile with intent.

His fingers tangled in coarse red orc hair, and he used that grip like a handle, yanking the orc’s head backward just enough to expose the neck and the vulnerable line behind the collar. Durandal came free with a brutal suck of gore, then went back in with less hesitation and more precision. Steel bit into the junction of bone and muscle where the spine met the shoulder. The red orc’s howl cut off into a choking rasp, arms jerking uselessly, body still trying to obey momentum even as the brain stopped giving orders.

The orc lost the ability to speak or react as Ludwig ripped out the sword, a geyser of blood shot out painting the protruding rocks red.

Blood sprayed warm across Ludwig’s forearms and the jagged stone teeth around them, turning gray rock into something that looked freshly butchered. The smell hit immediately, metallic, thick, and sharp enough to make an orc’s mouth water and a human’s stomach turn. Ludwig didn’t blink. He’d smelled worse. He’d been worse.

With his sword raised high and on top of the still standing but dying orc Ludwig howled, “FUCK EM UP BOYS!” he then jumped forward.

The shout wasn’t morale. It was ignition. It gave the allies behind him permission to stop thinking and start killing. Ludwig sprang off the dying body like it was a stepping stone, boots thudding into mud, shoulders lowering as he cut toward the next pocket of red muscle trying to push through the stone maze.

“Damn, there goes the leader…” Damra said.

Damra’s voice carried a mix of disbelief and grim admiration. Ludwig didn’t fight like a commander. He fought like a problem the battlefield couldn’t solve. One moment he was behind the line, the next he was inside the enemy’s ribs, dragging the fight forward by force.

“There is no need to worry for him,” Gale said as he took his infamous stance.

Gale’s tone didn’t change. It never did when killing was near. The Knight King lowered himself, posture compressing like a spring being loaded, and the air around him felt suddenly tighter, like the field itself noticed something old had decided to move.

A claw grip on the ground, bent knees, his right arm on the strapped Oathcarver on his back.

His fingers bit into soil and crushed grass flat, and when he launched, it wasn’t a run. It was a release. Dirt sprayed behind him in a fan, small stones popping upward from the force of his push-off. The massive orc body the tower had given him moved with impossible economy for its size, muscle and technique overriding weight like weight was a suggestion.

He didn’t arrive. He descended upon the Red Orcs, in one moment he was on the ground.

Oathcarver flashed once, less a swing and more an inevitability. A red orc’s neck vanished under the blade’s path, and the severed head turned through the air as if still confused it had been chosen. The body took two more stumbling steps, still trying to join the charge, before collapsing into the mud like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Gale was a master of death, whenever he appeared, heads will roll, he never swung twice to kill something. And if something needed more than one swing, he’ll find a way to use one still.

He didn’t waste motion. He didn’t “fight” in the way most warriors fought. He erased mistakes. Every red orc that stepped into his range stopped being a threat and started being a problem of gravity. Even the sound of his strikes was different: deep, final, like stone doors slamming shut.

The moment passed and in the next Gale was already behind another orc that had half its body torn with Oathcarver, a twist, a turn, and Oathcarver’s protruding hook slammed into the head of a Red Orc that tried to ambush him.

The hook caught bone with a crack like splitting wood. The ambusher’s eyes widened once, then the head snapped sideways, body folding as if its spine had been unplugged. Gale didn’t stop to watch it fall. He was already moving again, boots dragging through mud, leather armor scraping against stone teeth, leaving a trail like a storm had passed through the enemy ranks.

Damra didn’t like being outdone so he too moved forward, in his hands two small battleaxes that he twirled rapidly then ran up with his hands behind him.

He moved with a predator’s confidence, weaving between stone spears and the bodies already collapsing from poison and ambush. The axes spun in his grip like extensions of his wrists, blades catching light, then losing it again as they blurred. He didn’t shout. His aggression was quieter than orcs, but no less sharp.

A spear came his way to which he simply crossed his weapons and the spear turned to splinters, and without missing a beat, he sent one of the axes in his hand toward the one who tried to spear him.

The impact pinned the orc’s skull like a nail. The body dropped, knees hitting mud, then tipped backward in a stiff collapse, the axe handle sticking out at an obscene angle. Damra was already there before the corpse finished settling.

Damra didn’t stop as he moved past the corpse. He yanked the axe free with a wet jerk, gore stringing for a heartbeat before snapping. Gray matter smeared along the blade, and Damra used that same blade immediately, burying it into another red orc’s shoulder, then tearing sideways to open muscle and artery. He fought like someone used to hacking through thick hide, short, brutal arcs meant to cripple fast rather than duel.

The rest of the Ogres rushed up, proving to everyone why they were the most feared race in these planes. They knew how to enjoy themselves when it was time, but they also knew the art of battle well.

They hit the scattered red orcs like falling walls. Where orcs swung for glory, ogres swung for outcomes, breaking knees, crushing wrists, cutting tendons so the enemy couldn’t reform into a charging mass. Their weapons weren’t delicate. They were tools built for ending conversations. Even the way they advanced had discipline: two pushing forward, one stepping in to finish, another rotating out before exhaustion could make them sloppy.

Death began claiming its toll on this field, and death was very pleased.

The river behind them gurgled on, indifferent, carrying poison downstream. Reed stalks shivered under stray impacts.

Stone spears Ludwig had raised were now slick with blood, red bodies wedged between them like offerings.

The first third of the Red King’s force wasn’t being “fought.” It was being dismantled, piece by piece, breath by breath, until the flood stopped looking like a flood and started looking like meat trapped in a grinder.

Far away however, the Red King began moving.