Deus Necros

The tunnel was long, but not in any sense that lent itself to distance. Its narrow passage throbbed like the inside of some enormous windpipe, a place not built but grown from old, wet bone and strained cartilage. Each step Ludwig took was swallowed by the unnatural hush, the walls pressing in as if to claim him.

The air itself felt fetid and cloying, soaked through with the sweet rot of decay. Copper hung thick on his tongue with each breath, mingled with the stench of churned soil, mold, and blood gone cold long ago. From the ceiling and walls, roots twitched with slow animation, glistening with sap and something darker. Some of them recoiled as he passed, others slithered forward, brushing his shoulders, curling toward his arms like blind worms seeking confirmation. He did not flinch, but he felt them. Their touch clung.

He didn’t stop to read their meaning. Not out of courage, but necessity. There was no time for hesitation, not now.

Ahead, the Queen’s monstrous form squeezed through the winding arteries of stone like a deformity in motion. Her bulk pulsed and shifted, flesh bark crackling as she forced her way forward, her massive root-limbs digging deep and dragging her along. The tunnel responded to her like it knew her, the ground trembling with every lurch of her body, and the stone itself bending in unnatural ways to make room. Her movement was neither graceful nor brute. It was something worse, organic. A thing born to writhe.

Ludwig sprinted, the sound of his boots splashing echoed loud behind her. The liquid underfoot wasn’t water. His steps disturbed pools thick with oil-slicked rot and mucous filth. Patches of black clung like lichen to his shins, and every motion drew strands of viscous filth behind him like broken leashes. The floor was uneven, warped by centuries of growth and collapse. His balance held only because he forced his stomping sprints into the ground.

This passage was carved and hollowed by the queen’s arms and claws, like mold through dirt she tore through the thick walls of the cavern, entering from one tight passage to a laxer and more open one. She moved with purpose toward a certain and specific destination.

The Queen, her body bloated and glistening, surged through these passages like a beast mid-labor. Each heave cracked her outer shell in subtle bursts. Veins of green, blue, and red shimmered beneath bark-like skin, pulsing erratically as she dragged her prize forward. The cocoon within her radiated heat. A heartbeat that wasn’t hers, but not Celine’s either.

“STOP!” Ludwig roared, and the force behind his voice carried more than command. It carried despair. His chain snapped from his left arm like a striking whip, catching sparks off the jagged tunnel walls before spiraling toward the root mass trailing from the Queen’s hind body. It latched on, pulling taut with a metallic whine, anchoring him just enough to propel forward.

Celine’s limp body floated at the center of it all. Wrapped in translucent cords, suspended like a larval sacrifice just beneath the Queen’s ribs. Her form sagged in places, yet her spine occasionally arched violently as if something were exhaling through her. Her skin had taken on an unhealthy pallor, as though some invisible organ were filtering her vitality drop by drop.

Ludwig’s fingers tightened on his chain, his bones squeezed and creaked threatening to snap. The ache in his joints was dull and faraway but it was there, and every forward motion tore some of his undead flesh. Yet he pulled, scaling the Queen’s living flanks, searching for a point of leverage among the tangled net of roots and exposed sinew. Oathcarver remained clenched in his other hand, acting more like a stabilizer than a weapon, but already the thought was returning to swing it, to carve a path through.

The Queen shuddered. She knew.

The realization of his mounting presence hit her like a jolt. Her shriek was not of pain but offense. She had been violated, breached, and her entire form convulsed in indignation. From between her shoulder ridges, massive root-stalks unfolded like parasitic blooms, each capped with bulbous flowers that opened with sticky snaps. From their petals dropped new figures, hunched and malformed, Perturbants, stitched together from the armor and bodies of the paladins she had consumed earlier. Their helmets gleamed faintly, bearing symbols of the Order now twisted into mockeries. Their faces, if they had any left, bore the slack, hanging terror of souls denied rest.

But these things weren’t alive, nor truly dead. They were tethered to the Queen like marionettes, their movements stiff and disjointed. Vines and fibrous cords controlled their limbs, guiding them across the Queen’s back toward Ludwig with horrid precision. Their weapons still the Order’s swords, dragged behind them, catching on bone and root alike.

Ludwig cursed, but didn’t slow. With one final pull, he launched himself upward, twisting mid-air. He shouted the skill aloud, voice cracking with exertion. “[Summersault Slam]”. His body spun forward like a wheel of bone and wrath. When he landed, it was atop one of the Perturbants, the impact snapping ribs and splattering rot. The sound was wet and sharp, like a melon dropped from height.

Two more shambled forward, approaching in a synchronized lurch. They attempted to converge, their roots flailing. Ludwig’s body surged with strength, his buffs still active, his rage freshly ignited. He twisted his torso, swinging Oathcarver in a tight arc. The edge cleaved them both, the pressure and speed didn’t part them, but blasted their upper halves away. As for the other part it just collapsed and tumbled off the Queen’s back, dragged by their own tethering roots.

The Queen flinched, and for the first time since her escape, there was something frantic in her movements. A stutter to her stride. The puppets had failed her. The roots she hurled back were shredded by Ludwig’s momentum. She couldn’t shake him.

She began to bounce, jerking her weight up and down in a desperate, clumsy bid to throw him loose. But Ludwig snarled and whipped his chain downward again, fastening it around one of the thicker growths from her back. It snapped tight. He barely budged.

Ludwig’s face contorted in a frenzied smile and expression of anger.

“HERE’S JHONNY!!”