Deus Necros

Ludwig did not move immediately.

That was what made the next few seconds dangerous. Sloth had placed Joana and Celine where everyone could see them. Not hidden. Not chained in some distant dungeon. Not buried beneath the horde. Held plainly beneath the arms of the throne carriers, close enough to prove they were alive, far enough to make rushing in foolish. A challenge, a threat, and an offer all at once.

Ludwig’s first instinct was violence.

His second was death.

”Designate Death Point,” he muttered.

The Lantern obeyed.

The Soul Letting Lantern pulsed once against him, its flame hidden from most eyes but impossible for Ludwig not to feel. Something settled into place around this exact moment, this precise breath on the battlefield, this frozen instant before a mistake could become irreversible. If things ever got ugly, if Celine died, if Joana was torn apart, if Sloth’s authority swallowed the field and turned victory into slaughter, Ludwig could return here. He could redo the mess. Pay whatever price the Lantern demanded later, and make the present kneel now.

The knowledge did not calm him.

It only gave his anger somewhere to stand.

”Kaiser,” Ludwig said, voice low enough that only those close could hear, ”be ready.”

Kaiser did not understand what Ludwig was planning. His eyes flicked from Sloth to the carriers, then to the captives. He was still holding the Necropolitis together, still managing the undead tide, still fighting against the exhaustion pressing on every living thing around them. Yet he knew Ludwig well enough not to waste the moment asking questions. He simply straightened slightly, fingers tightening around his staff.

Ludwig snapped the fingers of his left hand.

A small black screen appeared beside Kaiser.

It looked like a Dark Mirror, but incomplete. Dull. Unlit. The surface did not connect anywhere, not yet. No second mirror existed to answer it. To most eyes, it would seem like an unfinished spell or a trick that failed before it began.

Kaiser understood immediately.

His expression sharpened by a fraction.

Ludwig had created the first mirror and deliberately left the second unmade.

”Evil Eyes,” Ludwig muttered.

Within Noctivex’s visor, purple light bloomed.

The Eyes of Envy manifested behind the monstrous helm, hidden beneath the living armor but active all the same. Ludwig knew the primary function was useless here. There was no point attempting to nullify Sloth’s authority through comparison. That ability had failed against Pride because Pride did not consider himself something that could be compared with, and here the problem was stranger. Sloth was, for lack of a better word, weak.

No one else on this battlefield could say that.

Only Ludwig could.

Right now, Ludwig was Strong. His declaration, that damned blade from Pride, had carved the world into a shape where the word meant something when he spoke it. Against that truth, the Eyes of Envy’s power to drag down something greater became warped, blunted, almost meaningless. He could not envy weakness. He could not nullify what he had already judged beneath him in that specific way.

But the Eyes still carried misfortune.

That was enough.

Ludwig did not use it on Sloth.

That would have been wasteful. Against an Usurper, the effect would be minimal, perhaps nothing more than an inconvenience. Instead, he fixed the purple gaze on the carriers of the throne. Those four massive amalgamations held Sloth, Celine, Joana, and the balance of the battlefield. They were not the king. They were the legs beneath the throne.

So Ludwig cursed the legs.

Sloth’s heavy gaze rested on him. ”They will die before you take your first step.”

”That’s fine,” Ludwig said.

It was a lie, and everyone near him who knew him well enough could hear it. His voice remained steady, but Van Dijk’s eyes cut toward him like a knife. Kaiser’s grip tightened. Even Gale, silent and deathly, seemed to shift his shield by a hair.

”I’ll bring them back with undeath,” Ludwig continued. ”It’s all good.”

Sloth’s eyelids lowered slightly.

”But trust me,” Ludwig said, Nightbreaker vibrating in his hand, ”if they die, you’ll suffer a fate far worse than death.”

”How futile...”

The word had barely finished crossing the ice when misfortune bloomed.

A crack formed beneath the throne.

Not large.

Not dramatic.

Just one thin fracture in the old ice beneath four enormous bodies and a giant reclining above them.

Ludwig saw it immediately.

He flicked his right hand.

Soul Chain erupted forward.

All four carriers were distracted for one vital second, their many heads and eyes angling downward toward the crack spreading beneath their feet. One noticed the incoming chain just in time. The amalgamation holding Celine opened one of its mouths wide, the jaw splitting apart far beyond anything human, trying to swallow her whole before the chain could reach.

The crack widened.

The throne tipped.

Just a little.

But when a seat that large, carried by four giants, tilted beneath the weight of Sloth himself, a little was enough.

The carrier lost balance for the briefest instant.

That was when the mirror beside Kaiser turned black.

A second mirror appeared beside Joana.

The connection completed.

Kaiser’s hand emerged from the black surface, pale and narrow, the hand of a refined noble boy that had no business reaching across a battlefield of monsters and gods. He did not try to pull Joana away. He did not grab her arm, her sleeve, or her hair. He did not waste time trying to fight the carrier’s grip.

Instead, the red finger of Ashkar touched the giant holding the throne.

The effect was immediate.

Flesh rebelled against flesh. The carrier’s body began deforming from within, lumps of meat and fused limbs rupturing out of its torso as though some worse amalgamation had decided to be born from the first. Bones shifted. Arms twisted. Mouths tore open where there had been none. The carrier staggered under the sudden corruption of its own body, and the throne lurched harder.

Sloth’s head tilted.

For the first time, annoyance truly touched his face.

The Soul Chain swept through the opening.

It caught both Joana and Celine.

Not gently.

There was no time for gentle.

The chain wrapped and pulled, ripping them from the carriers’ grasp just as one of the amalgamations snapped several mouths shut where Celine’s body had been an instant earlier. Joana’s head lolled. Celine’s arm swung limp. The chain yanked them backward across the dead field, dragging them through the air toward Ludwig.

The monsters saw the captives move.

They lunged.

Dozens of servants of Sloth sprang toward the two bodies crossing the battlefield, claws reaching, mouths opening, their instincts answering some silent command to tear away what Ludwig was trying to save. Before they could touch either woman, Van Dijk’s swamp answered.

Spears of black sludge shot upward.

Then swords.

Then hooked blades, barbed spikes, and long tendrils hardened into killing shapes. They burst from the tar-like pool and carved through anything that came near Joana and Celine. A monster leaping from the left was pierced through the chest by three black spears and torn apart before it fell. Another tried to reach from below and lost both arms to a scything blade of sludge. More surged in, and Van Dijk’s magic slaughtered them with cold, precise fury.

The Black Tower Master had not moved.

His eyes had not warmed.

The two women flew into Ludwig’s reach.

He caught them both against the vast armored bulk of Noctivex, Soul Chain unraveling the instant they were secured. They were alive. Battered, unconscious or near enough, but alive. Ludwig felt the faint signatures more clearly now. Joana’s breath fluttered weakly. Celine’s pulse shivered beneath blood and bruising.

Behind him, Van Dijk exhaled once.

Not relief.

Something sharper.

Ludwig looked back toward the throne.

”How unfortunate,” he muttered.

The ice beneath it broke.

Not cracked.

Broke.

The misfortune spread at last into collapse. The frozen ground under the front carriers gave way, opening into one of the only unfrozen wounds in Solania’s old icefield. Black water surged beneath, cold enough that mist rose from it in pale curtains. The two front amalgamations dropped with the shattered ice, their immense bodies vanishing into the frigid water with a crash that swallowed their roars. The rear carriers tried to hold the throne steady, but their footing failed, and the entire sofa-like seat pitched forward.

For one breath, it looked as if Sloth would fall.

He did not.

The throne touched the water and stopped.

Not floated.

Stopped.

The carriers were gone, swallowed into the freezing depths. The broken ice bobbed and cracked around the open wound. Black water churned beneath the throne, but the seat remained perfectly level now, as if the concept of sinking had become too much effort to apply to him.

Sloth remained in the same position.

Elbow on knee.

Head resting against his hand.

Eyes half-lidded.

He sighed.

”I despise motion...” he muttered.

Then he stood.

The world stopped, not like a metaphor, no, the world literally stopped.