Deus Necros

The withdrawing Red Orcs left the mountain looking very lonely. A shame that they left steaming corpses in their wake, but it was still a good reprieve from what would have been if they had kept the assault.

Steam lifted off fresh kills in faint, pale breaths, the kind a living battlefield released when it had just finished chewing.

Ludwig knew it, Damra knew it, everyone here knew it.

Relief was a dangerous thing. It softened the spine and loosened the grip. Even now, you could see it trying to creep into shoulders, into the way some of the allied orcs lowered their weapons a fraction, into the way goblins emerged from cover too soon, into the way lizardmen swallowed hard and blinked slow.

Ludwig refused it. He watched the empty lower slope like it was a mouth that had only paused mid-bite.

For whatever reason, the Red King had ordered the orcs to withdraw; it was good for them right now.

Good for now was the best currency the mountain offered. Ludwig took it and immediately tried to spend it on preparation, because “for now” always came with an expiry.

Whatever that roar had been, whatever leash had pulled the Red Orcs down the slope, it hadn’t sounded like surrender. It had sounded like a decision.

“How many injured and dead?” Ludwig asked.

He didn’t bother dressing the question. He kept his voice level and his eyes moving, tracking positions, counting who was still standing, who leaned too heavily on a weapon, who had blood pooling under their feet.

The smell of iron and sweat was thick, and the wind carried it down the mountain like a warning.

One of the goblins rushed up, “Three Ogres, one troll, six Orcs, and two lizardmen, not counting the ones in the river since they haven’t returned yet. As for goblins…” he looked around and back to Ludwig, saying, “No deaths.”

The goblin was panting like he’d sprinted the whole report out of his lungs. Dirt streaked his face. One ear was nicked, fresh blood drying along the edge, but he was upright. That mattered.

Ludwig saw Damra’s jaw tighten at “three ogres” and then settle into something colder, acceptance with teeth.

Ludwig’s brows rose up, “Not bad. How many claimed by the mountain?” Ludwig asked.

He looked down the slope where thorns still twitched among the piles. The mountain had been hungry during the fight; it would be hungrier now, when bodies stopped moving and became “owed.”

“Just a couple, we managed to drag the rest of the bodies before they were pulled under.

The goblin’s words came with a grim pride. It wasn’t reverence for the dead. It was survival math: every corpse saved from the vines was one less permanent loss, one more chance the tower might spit them back out in the next cycle.

“Good, whenever possible, try to bury them outside the mountain, give them a chance for the next cycle. Get the wounded treated back at the safe lands. We’ll hold the red orcs here for now,” Ludwig placed a hand on the ground and infused it with mana.

The soil under his palm felt damp, gritty, stained. He pushed mana through it anyway, carefully, like forcing air into a punctured lung. The ground resisted, sluggish and heavy, as if the mountain didn’t like being asked for anything that wasn’t blood.

It came with a wet crack of displaced earth and a rattle of stones, rising like a blunt tooth from the slope. Ludwig rested his forearm against it, not from exhaustion alone, but more like anchoring himself. His legs still trembled with residual strain. He hated that the orc’s body demanded rest and food like it had the right to complain.

“You still have mana to spare?” Gale asked.

Gale stood beside him, armor splattered, posture steady. Even in an orc’s skin, he looked like the same thing he’d always been: a weapon that happened to talk.

His gaze kept drifting to the broken tree line and the lower slope, as if he expected the red tide to pour back in at any second.

“Just a bit, I’ll use it sparingly, raising one boulder at a time, can’t do a full erecting of boulders like earlier, that’s too taxing. In a couple of hours, if this ’truce’ holds long enough, we’ll have a good fortification.”

Ludwig kept his tone practical, but his fingers flexed unconsciously. The mana reservoir inside him felt thin, scraped. He could rebuild a line, yes, but only if the enemy gave him time, and Ludwig didn’t believe in enemies gifting time without charging interest.

“Good, but I have to say something, Ludwig.”

Gale’s voice lowered a fraction. Not secrecy, weight. The kind of weight that meant he wasn’t asking permission to speak. He was warning.

Gale’s words echoed just enough for Damra, who was checking out on the rest of his people, to turn and listen.

Damra paused mid-step, still holding one axe by the haft like it was an extension of his arm. His face was streaked with grime and dried blood. The earlier cheer had been burned out of him. What remained was readiness and a hard, alert patience.

“That red King…You felt it?”

Gale didn’t point. He didn’t need to. The very mention of the Red King made the air feel heavier, as if everyone remembered the shape of that crown made of bones.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I might have missed something.”

Ludwig lied badly on purpose. He wanted Gale to say it out loud. Sometimes naming a fear made it easier to cut.

Gale looked toward the broken tree line and said, “I feel like it’s preparing something.”

The way he said it made Ludwig’s spine tighten. Gale didn’t do vague dread. When Gale felt “preparing,” it meant momentum gathering somewhere just out of sight, the way a storm gathered when the wind went still.

“Well, I would, if I were him. After having half of his army die before he reached the safelands.”

Ludwig kept his eyes on the slope. He watched thorns coil around a corpse’s ankle and tug it half an inch deeper. The mountain didn’t rush. It claimed.

“You’re underestimating the madness of kingship and the pride behind it.”

Gale’s voice carried a faint edge, not anger, but experience. He’d seen what crowns did to men and what men did to keep crowns.

“No, I really don’t, Gale. I know how crazy they can get. Remember, we just left the house of an emperor before we got here. The issue isn’t what he’s going to do I believe, it’s what we’ll do to counter it. I can already make an educated guess on what his next move is going to be.” Ludwig said.

He spoke fast, compressing thought into words. His gaze swept the line: goblins hauling injured, ogres dragging bodies away from creeping vines, trolls panting as they repositioned remaining stones. Everything was in motion, but it still felt like a pause between waves.

“Please do tell, we’ll need anything to wait and be anticipating for,” Damra said.

Damra’s voice was steady, but his eyes didn’t blink much. He looked like someone who’d already accepted the next wave would be worse.

“I have this sickening feeling that the next time we’ll face the Red Tusk Tribe… it won’t be a full army. But just one being.”

The words sat heavily the moment they left Ludwig’s mouth. A single enemy instead of a thousand sounded like relief, until you pictured what kind of creature could replace a thousand bodies and still be called “the next move.”

“And you’re right,” Ludwig heard from his chest pocket.

The crystal. The voice was sharp, urgent, not Kaiser’s usual leisurely cruelty. Ludwig’s fingers went to it instantly.

“Oh, Kaiser, where are you?” Ludwig asked.

His throat tightened around the words. Kaiser wasn’t supposed to sound like that unless something had gone wrong.

“Look up beyond the tree line, at the northwest.”

Ludwig raised his head to see a cloud of dust rising.

It wasn’t just a dust cloud. It was a moving smear against the horizon, thick and brown and boiling upward like something had been shoved through dry earth with brute force. Shapes cut through it, too many, too fast.

“Wow, you’re already here? Be careful, there are a lot of red orcs there.”

His first instinct was disbelief, then immediate calculation. If Kaiser had truly arrived, then the window had narrowed to minutes.

“Not as much as you think. We’re in trouble; you’ll have to engage right now.”

Kaiser’s words hit like a slap. Engage now wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command dressed as a warning.

“What? Engage? We barely managed to hold them off.”

Ludwig’s jaw clenched. The orc’s body wanted to pant, to burn through breath faster, like panic trying to seize the lungs. Ludwig refused it, forcing the breath to stay measured.

“I understand, Ludwig,” Kaiser said, “But the Red King is eating his own troops.”