Deus Necros

The Necropolitis rose in front of the holy city of Solania.

There was no other way for the people watching from the walls to understand it. It was not a spell simply cast upon the field, nor a fortress raised from stone, nor an illusion meant to frighten the enemy. It was a city. A dead city. Black towers, broken arches, mausoleum streets, hollow windows, grave walls, and cracked battlements lifted themselves out of the ice as if they had been buried beneath Solania since the beginning of the world, waiting for a voice vile enough, old enough, and dead enough to call them home.

The horror behind them was immediate.

Priests trembled. Paladins gripped weapons with white-knuckled hands. Citizens on the walls stumbled away from the battlements, some falling to their knees in prayer, others unable to look away. To place undead beside a holy city was asking for a war. To conjure a Necropolitis in view of the Sacrosanctum was the kind of act that should have drawn divine wrath, holy fire, bells of judgment, and every paladin in Solania charging forward with hymns on their lips and death in their eyes.

And yet no god struck it down.

No pillar of light descended from the heavens. No voice of the Holy Order’s patrons screamed in outrage. No miracle came to erase the dead city spreading across the frozen field. The gods did not bless it, but for now, they did not stop it either. That silence frightened the clergy more than open condemnation would have.

Because it meant the gods were watching.

And allowing it.

The Necropolitis was not only stone and structure. It had presence. Dominion. A claim laid upon the battlefield so complete that the ice, the snow, the dark magic, and the old death buried in Solania’s soil all bent toward it. A massive bubble of darkness swelled outward from the dead city’s heart, expanding with slow inevitability until it encapsulated the field, the horde, the Tower Masters, the Holy Order’s soldiers, and even Solania itself. The holy city, built to ward off darkness and stand as a beacon of divine order, now sat beneath a necromantic shroud lit only by faint blue soul flames burning across the dead streets.

The people hated it.

Deep down, they were also glad for it.

Because between them and the endless servants of Sloth now stood a horrid city of undead stone. Whatever came from the peaks would have to pass through that place first.

”This is good,” Van Dijk said.

His tone was quiet, but the satisfaction in it was unmistakable. He looked at the rising towers, the forming streets, the black walls taking shape ahead of the horde, then turned his gaze toward Kaiser. His smile returned in a thinner, more knowing shape.

”Quite unfortunate you don’t have an appointed King.”

Kaiser kept both hands on his staff, his youthful face drawn tight from the effort of maintaining the territory. ”Can only be a high-ranking Undead, sad to say. I don’t have that right now.”

He shrugged as if the limitation were merely inconvenient, but the motion was too stiff to fool Ludwig. The Necropolitis had answered, yes, but it was hollow in a way. A fortress without a ruler. A bastion without a commander. The dead city had been born, but its full fury remained asleep behind walls and empty streets.

”A high-ranking undead?” Ludwig asked.

Van Dijk answered first, because he could not help himself. ”A Necropolitis requires a leading figure. Someone within the dead hierarchy capable of anchoring its will and directing its force. Without such a figure, its full prowess remains sealed. Right now, this is just an empty bastion. It will stall, perhaps quite well, but it will not properly fight back.”

Ludwig looked toward Kaiser. ”Didn’t you say that you got that Death Knight a few years back?”

Kaiser frowned.

Then his eyes shifted, and he understood.

”Ah,” he said slowly. ”I completely forgot about that guy. Maybe it will work.”

It was a small performance.

A necessary one.

Most of the people watching did not know enough to doubt it. They saw a young mage, or something that looked like one, struggling to control a city of the dead. They saw him think, remember, and prepare to summon an ancient undead servant. That was easier for them to accept than the truth. The truth was standing only a few steps away, wrapped in living flesh and lies, holding the Malvolume Codex in a form no ordinary eye could see.

Kaiser pushed his hand forward and began mumbling under his breath.

Every gaze shifted to him.

From Ludwig’s side, where no one among the common soldiers and priests was looking closely enough, the invisible Codex Necros opened.

Motes of darkness slipped out.

Inside the Necropolitis, where the air was already thick with grave-shadow and the only light came from blue soul flames burning on dead street corners, the motes were almost impossible to notice. They moved like ash carried by a wind that did not exist, gathering several paces ahead of Kaiser’s extended hand. The Tower Masters noticed. Of course they did. The Gray Tower Master’s eyes narrowed. The Blue Tower Master’s smile sharpened. The White Tower Master inhaled very slowly through his nose. Van Dijk, infuriatingly, looked delighted.

The masses saw none of it.

Kaiser lifted his chin.

”Come out.”

The darkness condensed.

A massive undead manifested within the dead city.

He stood the height of a two-story building, broad enough that the black stone street beneath him seemed to have been made for his feet. Heavy armor covered him from head to toe, plate layered over plate, scarred by battle and age, yet still intact in the way only dead things preserved by force could be. A tower shield rested on one arm, enormous, thick, and brutal enough to resemble a mobile wall. He had no visible face beneath the helm, only a cold darkness where eyes should have been.

Gale looked around.

He did not speak.

He did not need to.

The moment he appeared, the Necropolitis changed.

The empty streets seemed to straighten. The grave towers leaned toward him. The soul flames burned higher, blue light flickering over black stone and old armor. The dead city had found a figure to recognize, not a king perhaps, but close enough to remember war.

”Hm,” Kaiser said, glancing toward Ludwig just briefly enough to confirm what had truly happened. ”Good enough.”

”Looks like you’re missing a weapon,” Ludwig said.

The words were casual enough for the performance, but his hand had already moved. He pulled out Oathcarver, its weight settling into his grip like an old promise dragged back into violence. The weapon looked absurd in ordinary hands, a massive slab of steel built less for graceful cutting and more for crushing skulls, breaking bones, and forcing shields apart. Along one edge, a hooked protrusion jutted forward, shaped to catch armor, puncture helms, or drag enemies into the path of the next blow.

”I got this thing fixed,” Ludwig said. ”You can use it.”

He threw it.

Oathcarver crossed the distance in a heavy spin, its weight humming through the dark air of the Necropolitis. Gale raised one armored hand and caught it by the hilt.

The moment the weapon entered his grip, it looked right.

Too right.

In Ludwig’s hand, Oathcarver had always seemed dangerous. In Gale’s, it looked complete. The massive steel became neither oversized nor clumsy, but natural, as if the weapon had been waiting for a hand large and dead enough to understand its purpose. The shield on one arm, Oathcarver in the other, armor like a fortress wrapped around a corpse of war, Gale stood at the threshold of the Necropolitis and became the thing the dead city needed him to be.

The Tower Masters did not miss any of it.

They understood the act immediately. They knew where the summon had come from. They knew Kaiser had not truly called Gale from some private storage of undead servants. They knew Ludwig had hidden the summon beneath the cover of Kaiser’s chant and presence. None of them spoke. The moment was too useful to ruin, and perhaps too dangerous to expose.

The masses saw only a lich helping them.

That alone was enough to twist their faces with shame.

They were thankful. They hated being thankful. They were terrified of the undead city, terrified of Kaiser, terrified of Gale, and yet every breath they still drew came easier because those horrors now stood between them and the black tide pouring from the mountains.

The servants of Sloth reached the outer edges of the Necropolitis.

They did not stop. Their numbers surged forward, crashing against the dead city’s boundary like a diseased ocean. The first ranks rushed through broken archways and along forming streets, their bodies packed so tight that they climbed over one another to enter. They poured between black walls, across grave roads, over tomb-marked courtyards. Their pale eyes burned under the dome of darkness, but the moment they stepped fully into the Necropolitis, their movements became heavier.

Slower.

Not enough.

But enough.

Gale moved.

The undead giant took one step forward, and the street beneath him cracked.

He raised his tower shield a few inches off the ground.

Then slammed it down.

The first impact made the whole Necropolitis shudder.

Not tremble. Shudder. As if the city itself had been struck in the chest and awakened further from death. Black dust fell from archways. Blue soul flames bent violently in their sconces. The shock traveled through the dead streets and rolled across the ice beneath Solania’s walls, making several citizens cry out and clutch at stone for balance.

Gale raised the shield again.

The second slam cracked the ice beneath the Necropolitis.

Long fractures spread outward from the dead city’s foundations, cutting through frozen ground in branching lines. The servants of Sloth stumbled as the terrain shifted under them. Some fell into cracks. Others were crushed beneath those behind them. The Necropolitis absorbed the fractures, fed on them, turned them into new grave seams and narrow trenches that shaped the flow of the horde.

Gale raised the shield a third time.

Kaiser’s hand tightened around his staff.

The third slam called the ancient soldiers who had died on these fields to battle.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the ground answered.

”Rise, Undead,” Kaiser muttered, voice low, carrying through the Necropolitis like a command spoken from inside a tomb. ”Rise if you would. For that is your duty.”

The terrain erupted.

Bones tore through snow and ice. Armored corpses clawed out from beneath the battlefield, not clean skeletons neatly arranged by a necromancer’s workshop, but old dead soldiers dragged from where history had left them. Broken helms, rusted swords, cracked shields, snapped spears, torn banners fused to ribs, skulls still wearing the dents that had killed them. They surged out of the ground in waves, not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands, like wasps boiling out of a nest that had just been struck.

The priests screamed prayers.

The paladins took several steps back despite themselves.

The citizens on the walls watched the dead rise beneath the holy city and could no longer tell whether they were witnessing salvation or damnation wearing its armor.

The ancient soldiers turned toward the servants of Sloth.

Gale lifted Oathcarver.

The Necropolitis finally began to fight.