Deus Necros

Van Dijk watched and waited as he measured the rise of the spell like a physician timing spasms: steady, steady, then a small quickening. His hand twitched, ready to break the lattice with a single null gesture. For a heartbeat, the edges of his coat stirred in a wind that wasn’t wind. He looked at Ludwig’s shoulders, relaxed still, and stayed his movement by an inch.

“That should be about enough,” Ludwig snuffed the spell with a simple thought and the pressure that was building up immediately eased.

The orb winked shut as if pinched between two fingers; the pull collapsed, the groan in the stone sank back into quiet. Dust fell in a slow rain. Ludwig let his raised hand lower to his knee. He did not look smug; he did not look surprised. He looked as though he had lifted a weight and set it down.

Van Dijk on the other hand, impressed with Ludwig’s progress, without any ceremony or introduction raised his finger up and then pointed down, “Bullet Hell.” He muttered jus enough for Ludwig to hear it.

No lecture. No preamble. The raised finger drew the chamber’s light a fraction darker; the downward point called the storm. He let the name fall with the softness of a sentence already carried out.

Turning his head, it was the same spell that bruised him black and blue earlier, but this time he was ready.

He had rehearsed the fear out of his muscles. The memory of blunted force blossomed and closed like an old ache; his breath came long and even. He watched the ceiling darken as if clouds were forming under stone.

His palm struck fractured rock; from that touch a plane of black rose up in like a sheet of black shadow at first, wobbly like oil and hardened to a rectangular black mirror. The first bullets hit, then were gone. No ring, no ricochet. The surface accepted them the way a mouth accepts breath. Beyond its edge, the chamber erupted: stone shredded, shards spat outward, a divot opened and another and another as if an invisible plow were ripping the floor. Inside the mirror’s rectangle there was only smoothness, a false calm in a ruin.

“Not bad, but that isn’t what I was expecting…” Van Dijk said.

Approval clipped short, curiosity sheathed. He watched the sheen without blinking.

“Yeah, I know, Ludwig said as a new mirror appeared right being Van Dijk.

The second plane was erected as silent as frost forming on glass. Its surface held Van Dijk’s silhouette and offered nothing else, a door without a room behind it.

Without turning, Van Dijk waved his hand, a barrier bulbed out from his gesture, clean, seamless, a soap-bubble made of will. In the same instant the rear mirror exhaled violence: all the swallowed bullets came roaring back, a black torrent loosed point-blank at the man who had called them.

The bullets however splashed harmlessly against Van Dijk’s barrier.

They broke like rain on glass; ripples raced, died, left the surface unmarked. The room filled with the steady, hiss-less percussion of force being told no.

The nod from Van Dijk was small; the unsatisfied glint was not. Then Ludwig moved. One step, his outline thinned, and he emerged from the rear mirror’s edge with no more drama than a man passing a curtain. He lifted a finger toward Van Dijk’s spine, not threatening, merely demonstrating possession of space.

“A warp gate?”

Van Dijk did not turn his head. The question was almost idle, the kind you ask while revising an assessment upward.

“Different, but close enough,” Ludwig said.

His voice sounded steady to his own ears, though his skin still tingled from the sensation of crossing, like walking through cold breath.

“I see… impressive nonetheless… this is quite better than what I had in mind. As I thought you’d learn shadow step…”

There was a wryness to Van Dijk’s concession. He had expected the old solution. The new one pleased him more because it surprised him.

“I tried it, I’m faster on my own feet, and it has too many limitations…” Ludwig said.

He flexed his hand once, as if shaking off the last of the mirror’s cool. The honesty cost nothing; he was done chasing tricks that failed under noon.

“Mainly?” Van Dijk asked.

“It requires shadows, I’m not a fan of a spell that can simply be nullified by a strong light, this one however is more usable.”

He did not bother to hide the disdain. A technique that dies to a lantern isn’t a foundation; it’s a party trick.

“Shadow Step falls under Black Magic, so it isn’t forbidden by the Holy Order nor the empire.”

Van Dijk offered the fact the way a physician offers a bland, nutritional broth. It was true. It was also beside the point.

“I can use it when I need to, but this is less taxing, and its both offensive and defensive…”

The mirror at his side sank back into the floor and left only the gouges the storm had carved. He allowed himself one breath of satisfaction, function over form, and let it go.

Van Dijk nodded, “Impressive display of skill, now then, seems like we’ll have to cut your training short…” Van Dijk said.

The praise ended with a hinge-squeak into business. His posture changed by a hair: teacher folding into courier.

“Why? What’s going on?” Ludwig asked.

He straightened fully, the Codex’s weight forgotten, Salem’s tail stilled. A pulse ran through the wards as if the Tower itself listened for the answer.

Van Dijk handed a letter with one hand to Ludwig.

The parchment was thick, the seal brutish with authority. Wax cracked under Ludwig’s thumb like thin ice. The words inside might have been fire for how quickly they burned their meaning into him. Frontline. The syllables dragged iron through his thoughts, movement, muster, maps turning from ink to blood. He looked up once, met Van Dijk’s steady gaze, and felt the Black Tower tilt around the axis of that single order.

“Imperial edict. You’re to head to the frontline… effective immediately.”