Deus Necros

For a few breaths after the Demon King vanished, Solania did not know what to do with itself.

The field outside the city walls was ruined. Ice had been torn up in long trenches, melted, refrozen, shattered again, and left in jagged ridges that steamed under the cold air. Far in the distance, the mountain struck by Ludwig’s final attack continued to groan, whole curtains of snow and broken ice pouring down its sides in avalanches that rolled like white thunder across the peaks. The air still carried the taste of wrath and black flame, bitter enough that even the guards on the wall felt it on their tongues.

Ludwig stood at the center of the broken field, Nightbreaker resting low in his hand. The red violence around his body had faded, and the jagged crystalline protrusions around his fingers were slowly sinking back beneath the skin. His breathing was steady. Not calm, exactly, but steady. The last traces of the Demon King’s unstable manifestation dissolved into the sky like smoke pulled into a storm.

The people watched him.

At first, no one cheered. Fear was still too large for that. The citizens on rooftops, the guards on the walls, the priests who had dared come close to the gate, all of them stared at the man who had fought the thing that had walked out of the Sacrosanctum. He was not shining. He was not wrapped in holy light. He did not look like the Hero from murals or temple songs. His coat was torn, his armor had moved like something alive beneath the blows, and his weapon looked too brutal to belong in the hands of a savior.

But he had stood.

And the Hero had not.

Someone on the wall finally spoke, his voice uncertain at first. ”That’s him.”

Another guard turned. ”Who?”

”The man from the gate,” the first said, leaning forward over the battlement as if distance had become an insult. ”The one who came with the S rank adventurer token. Ludwig the Hero of Tulmud.”

Several guards nearby heard the name and repeated it, first among themselves, then louder. Recognition spread in uneven bursts. Not many knew him. Most had never seen him before this day. But a name was a dangerous thing once fear needed somewhere to turn. It gave shape to gratitude, and the crowd seized it because the alternative was continuing to stare at a nameless man who had just driven away a Demon King.

”Ludwig,” someone called.

Then another.

”Ludwig!”

The cry passed from wall to roof, from roof to street, carried by those who had seen the attack split the field and those who had only seen enough to know they were still alive. It was not the clean chant of a planned celebration. It was messy, frightened, relieved, and full of people who did not yet understand the consequences of what they were cheering.

That made it more honest.

Ludwig glanced toward the walls, then looked away.

”Great,” he muttered. ”That’s going to be annoying.”

Kaiser, who had followed him at a more reasonable distance and now stood near one of the broken ridges of ice, adjusted one sleeve over his burned hand. ”Public favor is rarely convenient.”

”I didn’t ask for favor. I asked for the Demon King to leave.”

”And yet here we are.”

Before Ludwig could answer, armor rang from the direction of the city gate.

Several dozen paladins rushed out first, weapons drawn, shields raised, their formation too late to be useful and too tight to hide the fact that they had no idea whether they were arriving as reinforcements, executioners, or witnesses. Priests followed behind them, robes gathered in their hands as they hurried across the frozen ground. A few bishops came with them, their vestments heavy with gold thread and holy symbols, faces pale but already hardening into the expressions of men preparing to defend a story before anyone finished accusing them of writing it.

High priests came last.

They did not run. They moved with the dignity of people very aware that they had an audience, though the speed of their steps betrayed them all the same.

Behind them, two paladins and a bishop moved toward the place where Hiro was still buried up to the neck in ice. The Hero had gone red in the face from shouting, spitting, and trying to wrench himself free by strength alone. It had not worked. Gravitas still held enough residual force around him that even the ice seemed reluctant to release its prisoner. When the bishop reached him, he placed both hands forward and began chanting. Holy light spilled across the frozen ground, softening the ice, weakening the gravitational knot, and finally allowing several paladins to drag Hiro out.

Hiro came free with a furious gasp, covered in frost, mud, blood, and humiliation.

Above the field, the Tower Masters descended.

They did not hurry, which made their arrival worse. Gray, Red, Blue, White, and Black lowered themselves from the sky like verdicts deciding where to land. Their presence changed the temperature of the scene immediately. The paladins stiffened. The priests looked suddenly less certain of how loud they wanted to be. Even the bishops, who had come prepared to reclaim authority, found themselves glancing upward too many times.

Van Dijk landed with a polite smile.

The White Tower Master landed beside him, expression tight, eyes moving from the broken field to the city, then to the Sacrosanctum still groaning in the distance. The Red Tower Master looked as if he wanted to study every crater before anyone cleaned them up. The Blue Tower Master watched the crowd as much as the clergy. The Gray Tower Master said nothing at all.

One of the bishops recovered first.

He stepped forward, robes snapping around his ankles, one accusatory finger already raised toward Ludwig.

”You fool!” he barked. ”Why did you have to intervene in matters that regard the Church?”

The cheering on the walls faltered.

The bishop seized the silence with the instinct of a practiced speaker. ”Do you have any idea what you have risked? Do you understand what careless hands can do when touching prophecy, ritual, and divine mandate? The Holy Order has labored for years to manifest and support the Hero of this age, the one chosen for the sole purpose of defeating the Demon King. And you, an outsider, an invader, a man who forced his way into sacred ground and caused chaos beneath the Sacrosanctum, had the arrogance to hinder that sacred duty.”

Several priests nodded quickly, relieved that someone had given them words to stand behind.

”You struck the Hero,” the bishop continued, voice swelling. ”You interfered with his ordained battle. You threw him aside, mocked divine purpose, and risked allowing the Demon King to wreak havoc upon Solania and beyond. Do you think swinging a weapon makes you righteous? Do you think brute force grants you understanding? The Demon King is not a beast to be slain by impulse. The Church has prepared for this threat through sacrifice, faith, and sacred guidance. Your interference could have doomed us all.”

A few guards on the wall exchanged glances.

One of them, the same who had recognized Ludwig, frowned openly. ”Didn’t the Hero arrive late before Ludwig fought the Demon King?”

Another guard beside him muttered, ”And then tried to stab Ludwig while he was fighting.”

A priest near the wall turned sharply. ”Silence. You know nothing of divine matters.”

The guard’s expression darkened. ”I know what I saw.”

”You saw fragments,” a paladin snapped, stepping toward the battlement stair. ”You are soldiers, not theologians. You do not understand what it means to face the Demon King. Such an entity cannot be killed easily. The Hero’s role is not something common eyes can judge after one exchange.”

”I heard that he got sent through several walls inside the sacrosanctum, and also he was as useful in this fight as tits on a boar... so much for being a hero,” another guard said under his breath.

The paladin heard it and flushed, but the bishop raised a hand before the argument could spread. His gaze returned to Ludwig, sharper now, more desperate beneath the authority.

”It is true that the Demon King is not dead,” Ludwig said.

The words cut through the field.

The guards who had begun to take courage in their own eyes went quiet. The citizens on the walls felt their relief shrink. Even the people who had cheered his name moments earlier now looked smaller beneath the implication.

Ludwig let the truth sit for a moment, because comforting lies were the Church’s business, not his.

”And it’s true that he’ll come back,” he continued.

The bishop seized the opening. ”Then you admit it. You failed to destroy him.”

”But it’s also true,” Ludwig said, looking toward Hiro, ”that if this dumbass fought him as he is right now, he would have died ten thousand times over. I just did you a favor.”

Hiro’s face twisted.

”You arrogant bastard,” the Hero hissed. Holy light flickered around his sword as he pushed past the bishop and paladins holding him back. ”You think because you landed a few cheap blows, you understand anything? You stopped me from slaying him. You humiliated me in front of the city and let the Demon King escape. How do we know you aren’t working with him? How do we know this wasn’t all part of your plan?”

Ludwig looked at him for one long second.

”Retard.”

The word landed badly enough that several priests gasped, which was one of the few pleasures left in the field.

”Who would fucking fight the man he’s working under?” Ludwig asked. ”Did you think I agreed to serve him and then decided to introduce myself by smashing him through the Sacrosanctum wall?”

”You speak with the tongue of evil because that is what you are,” Hiro snapped. ”Everything about you reeks of arrogance, violence, and corruption.”

”Coming from you, that means less than nothing.” Ludwig turned from him before Hiro could answer and looked toward the city, specifically the Sacrosanctum, which was still shuddering in the distance. Another tremor passed through it as he watched. Dust rose from one of the upper towers. A crack spread along the outer wall and split a row of saintly reliefs clean through the eyes. ”Anyway, it’s good that you’re all here.”

The bishops hesitated.

Ludwig nodded toward the holy complex. ”I guess Titania is pretty pissed about you guys imprisoning her.”

The reaction was far more useful than any confession.

A few high priests looked away immediately. Not down in shame, not exactly. More like men avoiding the gaze of a blade they had known was hanging above them. One bishop’s mouth tightened. Another’s fingers twitched around his staff. The paladins who had not been deep enough inside the Sacrosanctum looked between their superiors with growing uncertainty.

”What are you talking about?” Hiro barked. ”She is being judged for dishonoring the Hero.”

Ludwig looked at him.

Then at his bloodied nose, cracked pride, frost-covered armor, and the paladins still discreetly trying to remove ice from his cloak.

He failed to see the honor.

”You can lie to yourselves all you want,” Ludwig said. ”That’s clearly a talent you’ve trained harder than swordsmanship.”

Hiro took a step forward, but Mot’s purple aura suddenly tightened from where he stood near the city gate. The Hero stopped, not because he wanted to, but because some instinct finally reminded him that there were people present who could make him stop permanently.

Ludwig looked toward the Tower Masters. ”But they aren’t blind anymore. They saw it all. Even the dirty bits.”

The field shifted again.

The priests understood what that meant. The bishops understood worse. The concealment had been broken. The ritual exposed. The lower chambers revealed to powers beyond the Holy Order’s control. The dead bound beneath the Sacrosanctum, Titania severed from her patrons, the lines feeding the summoning, the false holiness painted over rot, all of it had been opened to eyes that were not theirs to command.

Ludwig turned to Van Dijk.

”Which begs the question,” he said. ”Master, you were captured there once. Why didn’t you bring the whole damned place down?”

Van Dijk’s smile became awkward in a way that made the Red Tower Master’s eyebrows rise.

”Ah,” Van Dijk said, lifting one hand slightly as if the question were more inconvenient than dangerous. ”It would not have been difficult doing that.”

Several priests stiffened at the casual admission.

”But without eyes to see what was truly going on,” Van Dijk continued, ”who do you think they would believe? A vampire like me? Or men dressed in holy auras while rotten to the core?”

The word vampire rippled through the gathered clergy and guards like a dropped torch in dry grass. Paladins tightened their grips on weapons. Priests whispered prayers on reflex. But none of them moved. They had seen too much, and more importantly, the Tower Masters had heard too much.

The White Tower Master’s expression grew colder.

The Blue Tower Master’s amusement faded into something razor thin.

The Red Tower Master looked toward the bishops now, and for the first time since arriving, he seemed interested in them rather than the destruction.

The Gray Tower Master still said nothing, but the silence around him became heavier.

One of the high priests tried to recover. ”The word of a vampire cannot stand above the Holy Order.”

”No,” Van Dijk agreed pleasantly. ”That was precisely the problem. It no longer is the case now, your Order is failing.”

The White Tower Master finally spoke. His voice was controlled, but the restraint in it was visible to anyone with sense. ”Unfortunately, we cannot act upon it right now.”

That stunned several guards more than anything the clergy had said.

One of them, still standing on the wall but loud enough to carry, shouted, ”Why? If there is corruption, isn’t it wiser to act?”

The question pulled murmurs from soldiers and citizens alike. It was simple, and because it was simple, it was dangerous. If the Holy Order was corrupt, why were the powerful not moving? If Titania had been imprisoned, why were they debating? If the Demon King had been summoned from beneath the Sacrosanctum, why were the bishops still standing?

Ludwig answered before the White Tower Master could.

”As much as I also want to hang these bastards for what they did,” he said, looking toward the mountains beyond Solania, ”we need them right now.”

The mood changed.

Slowly, unwillingly, every gaze followed his.

The peaks of Solania stood far beyond the city, pale and jagged beneath the cold sky. For a moment, nothing seemed different. Only distant avalanches from the earlier battle rolled down the mountain slopes, and clouds of powder drifted like ghost smoke along the ridgelines.

Then the pressure arrived.

It was faint at first, a wrongness beneath the skin. Not the Demon King’s burning hunger for battle. Not holy power. This was colder, older, and familiar in a way that made Ludwig’s fingers tighten around Nightbreaker without conscious thought. Something from those peaks had smelled him. Or sensed him. Or perhaps had simply been waiting for enough noise to make movement worthwhile.

Van Dijk’s smile faded.

Mot looked toward the mountains and said nothing.

The White Tower Master’s eyes narrowed.

Ludwig kept his gaze fixed on the distant peaks.

”Because he’s coming.”

The silhouette of something moved atop the peaks of Solania, and then after it, the white capped tips of the mountain began bleeding black.