Deus Necros

Ludwig pet the feline and said, “It found me, not the other way around. Salem was stuck in this book back at Tibari, right next to The Gluttonous Death. Though that guy seemed uninterested with it. What does it matter to you?”

Salem arched into his palm with a neat, unhurried stretch, fur cool and impossibly smooth beneath his fingers, like stroking shadow given a coat. The creature’s eyes slitted in pleasure, then opened into two thin coins of gold that watched everything and gave away nothing.

Ludwig’s tone stayed mild, but his thumb moved once more behind the ear, thoughtful as much as affectionate. He was aware of the lantern’s faint, prickled hum, the way all confined pride vibrates when faced with something it cannot catalog.

“Hmph, pearls on swine… you don’t even understand what you have.”

The words rolled out of the lantern with contempt as dry as old bone. Brass ticked faintly as the spirit within shifted, the sound like a fingernail drawn across a thin plate. The insult was meant to bite and did, though Ludwig let it glide past his ear as if swine had learned, in this world at least, to hold pearls and ask their price.

Ludwig sighed, he truly didn’t understand Salem well. And since his master mentioned that Ludwig already was capable of avoiding the earlier Bullet Hell barrage, he realized that Salem with its shadow control could help him do that, but that won’t the same as Ludwig doing it himself.

He let his hand fall to the page and watched Salem’s tail curl into a question mark. The idea of slipping through darkness by borrowing Salem’s nature scratched at him, useful, elegant, and yet wrong for the lesson Van Dijk intended. The chamber’s lamplight drew long, steady shadows along the book-stand and across his knees, tempting avenues if he chose to take them. They felt like doors unlocked by someone else’s key.

But still, ego and pride were enough to make Ludwig not give in to the lich nor his master’s expectations. Taking the easy way won’t help him grow.

He tasted the bitter copper of stubbornness and let it sit under his tongue. Pride had kept him alive as often as it had nearly killed him; he knew the taste and its cost, though it was more like stubbornness at times. He rubbed the heel of his palm across his brow and set his shoulders as if shouldering a pack.

And as of right now, the lich was interested, but not in Ludwig, but in Salem. This won’t help Ludwig much to loosen the Lich’s tongue.

The lantern vibrated with a thin, curious tension that had nothing to do with generosity. Attention was a sort of currency in these conversations, and he would not spend it where it made the wrong thing richer. He glanced at Salem, who blinked back slowly, unimpressed with the politics of the dead.

Ludwig didn’t want to give the Lich anymore advantages when it came to this conversation so he simply ignored him and kept wracking his brain against the words written in the codex.

He bent over the Codex, letting the lantern’s muttered disdain wash off the edges of his focus. The page’s ink had that alive quality again, letters that seemed to resettle when you weren’t looking, diagrams that sighed into new proportions if your attention flagged. He dragged his finger along a line of symbols and forced them to hold still.

As he read through, he felt that he was on the cusp of understanding a new level of power, but it kept escaping him. The way the words were written was simple, but Ludwig felt like something was missing. As if it was a fully built tower, but missing its keystone, without it, the whole spell would simply crumble, and that was the same case for most of the spells in the codex.

The sensation nagged: like standing beneath a completed arch and knowing it would fall the moment weight touched it. He could see the form, even admire the elegance, yet some small wedge, the pressure point that made it true, had been withheld. His mouth shaped unheard fragments as he traced, backed up, traced again. The silence of the room thickened, a patient tutor.

Faulty, missing bits and pieces, or outright unfunctional, besiedes a couple that Ludwig seemed to be able to mimic to a certain extent. Dark Tide, and Dark Bullet, because these were too basic.

He had bullied those two into obedience through repetition and instinct, hammering structure where the text refused generosity. Everything else behaved like a lock with its teeth filed off, close enough to tempt, never enough to turn. His thumb worried the page’s edge until the vellum warmed.

And the lich wasn’t going to simply give up his knowledge for free. And van Dijk wasn’t going to help Ludwig eitherway.

That door was double-barred: pride on one side, pedagogy on the other. The lantern’s prisoner hoarded, and Van Dijk, who believed in the education of failure, would watch a while longer before extending a hand. Ludwig felt the small, weary amusement of recognizing both entities in himself.

After sighing again, Ludwig closed the codex.

The book shut with a breathy thump that felt like a held exhale released. Salem’s ears flicked once at the sound; the lantern gave a dim, satisfied hum, as if a rival had been set aside.

“Giving up already?” Thomas said.

The ghost’s voice drifted from his shoulder with the lazy pleasure of someone arriving after the heavy lifting is done. Thomas lounged in the air, chin propped on a spectral palm, eyes bright with unhelpful interest.

“Nah. Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is idiocy in itself. I’ll change my approach…” Ludwig said as he pulled a couple books from his ring.

He reached into the ring and felt the soft, impossible resistance, like sliding his hand through cool syrup, and then the familiar weight of old binding set into his palm. Two volumes thumped down beside the Codex. Their spines were cracked, the leather, if it was leather, held a sheen that no cow ever grew. A faint scent rose from them: dust, dried herbs, and something like old rain.

These were the first books he ever read when he first came to this world. Books made by Hcil Algad, at first his name was just that, a name for a mage. But the more Ludwig went through the world and the more he learned, the more he realized how scarce this man’s books were. They were incredibly rare too. And only found copies of his work in Master Van Dijk’s library. Or in some random ditch somewhere.

Perhaps from these, he could uncover some secrets… and there was only one way to find out.