Deus Necros

The werewolf took a step back, his heavy frame gliding through the clearing like a wolf stalking unfamiliar prey. He was no longer playing at superiority, he had it, and he knew it, but something in Ludwig’s resolve kept him from lunging. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t even caution. It was calculation. There was something in Ludwig that hadn’t been there in other prey. The beast could feel it, gnawing faintly at the edge of his certainty.

He moved now in a slow circle, each step deliberate, clawed feet brushing through damp roots and broken stone. Around them, the root-filled cave was holding its breath. The Queen’s reconstruction continued behind him, her head reforming and the gash sealing shut with sinew and thorn, her limbs stretching out like branches reknitting across a storm-snapped tree. The werewolf’s attention shifted for a brief second to the vampire, still crouched nearby, half-lost in a fog of blood and half-formed memory. Her hands were trembling. Her mouth hung slightly open, as if the act of breathing itself was uncertain.

“Should I use her?” the werewolf asked aloud, the thought drifting from his throat without emotion. “Would that strike some nerve? Perhaps I could bait you into something reckless.”

The vampire let out a hiss, more reflex than will. Her crimson eyes flared dimly, but there was nothing focused in them. The voice that had screamed for freedom earlier was gone now. Only the body remained.

“No,” the werewolf muttered after a moment, “she’s useless. Mindless. She’s not a threat, not even a proper tool. True vampires grow with time, their minds sharpen as their bodies age, but she… she’s just rot dressed in old flesh. She’s old in body, yes, but broken in mind. Hollow where it counts.” He gave a weary exhale, almost annoyed by her continued presence.

Then he turned back to Ludwig, stopping just outside the range of Oathcarver’s swing. “Tell me something,” he said, his tone almost curious now, like a man inspecting a puzzle. “How did you manage to kill my first sired? You don’t look like you have the power to do it. Certainly not now.”

Ludwig raised a brow slightly, though his face didn’t shift much beyond that. His eyes, however, darkened. “It isn’t difficult to kill a beast that’s lost its mind. He was a husk. All instinct, no reason. Too far gone to be useful. Easier to put him down than let him run wild.”

There was a flicker across the werewolf’s face then, something not quite grief and not quite rage. More like old regret that had gone stale with age. “He was supposed to be an experiment, my first, turned,” he growled, though he quickly shook the emotion off with a sneer. “Still, that makes no difference now. You killed him. And for that, there must be payment. I don’t care if he was a failure. If I don’t exact the price, the others will say I’ve gone soft.”

“The others?” Ludwig asked. The words weren’t mocking, only inquisitive, but they landed with weight. “There are more like you?”

The beast laughed then, not kindly, not madly, but with the tired bitterness of someone repeating a joke he’d told too many times. “Necros didn’t tell you?” he asked, though the tone suggested he already knew the answer. “No wonder he keeps making the same mistakes. No wonder he keeps birthing failures and throwing them to the fire, hoping one survives.”

He took a step closer, letting the weight of his size press subtly into the space between them. “There were eleven of us. Half a dozen remain. We were the first Apostles, or close enough. We learned early on that what Necros wanted from us was madness. That his goals were too far above even the strongest of us. Killing an Usurper? Please. You’d have better odds putting a knife through the throat of a star.”

His voice rose slightly, not in volume but in intensity, like a fire catching a dry branch. “But he keeps trying. And here you are. Another one. Another blade sent into the dark with no sheath to return to.”

Ludwig said nothing. He watched, listened, and let the beast speak. Let him unravel himself.

“I’ll offer you something, though,” the werewolf continued, his eyes narrowing. “You’ve intrigued me. That earns you a kind of recognition. So I’ll let you live. Or, whatever state this is that you call living. But you have to entertain me. That’s the price.”

Ludwig shifted his weight and looked the creature in the eye. “Do I look like your clown or jester?” His tone was flat. The insult was obvious, but it wasn’t delivered with heat.

The werewolf’s grin returned, but there was no laughter in it this time. His face, once relaxed, tightened again. The mirth drained away from his features like blood from a dying wound. The clearing chilled with it. “I’ve indulged your arrogance long enough. You want to walk away from this? Fine. Kill the Queen. Prove you’re worth the space you occupy. If you can do that, I’ll let you crawl away. My quarrel with you is meaningless, but your proximity to Van Dijk… that’s more interesting.”

The name hung in the air like an unsheathed dagger. Ludwig didn’t flinch.

Without another word, he flexed his grip and cast [Limit Breaker] silently. The spell threaded itself through his muscles, twisting the fibers tighter, locking power into his limbs without visible fanfare. Oathcarver hissed as it came free from the ground, the blade humming with a faint trace of defiance. Ludwig didn’t even look at the werewolf as he turned.

“Funny thing though,” he said as he walked past him, voice as casual as if they were discussing weather.

The werewolf tilted his head. “You find this situation amusing?”

Ludwig didn’t stop walking. “Maybe,” he said. “But tell me something. Did it ever occur to you… that this might not be our first time having this conversation?”

The werewolf paused, brow twitching ever so slightly.

Ludwig kept going.

And in that brief pause, realization struck. The werewolf’s eyes narrowed. The confidence on his face flickered for a single second, not with fear, but with unease. If Ludwig died, he would return. And if he returned, he would remember. Again. And again.

The beast would not.

That meant this moment, this exchange, might already be a repetition.

The same words. The same ground. The same trees and ruined Queen. The same outcome.

And if it was not the first time… how many times had Ludwig been through it?

How much did he already know?