Deus Necros

The man who had presented Ludwig to the commander stepped out of the tent with a brisk military salute and the muffled clank of his boots on canvas. The flap fell back into place behind him with that soft slap that cut the tent’s interior from the outside world; instantly the din of the camp, hammers, shouted orders, the creak of wagons, was reduced to a distant hum. Inside, only the rasp of parchment and the faint crackle of a guttering lamp kept the space from feeling completely still.

Ludwig remained standing where the soldier had left him, the staff warm in the crook of his wrist. The commander’s attention, however, was clearly elsewhere: her hands moved over maps and reports with the practiced indifference of someone who had spent years measuring the world into lines and rulings. Ink smears, pinprick marks of patrols, a scattered heap of dispatches, the tent smelled of ink and oil and the faint, metallic tang of command. He recognized the ritual for what it was: a hazing, an old military custom that trusted silence and patience to remind newcomers of the hierarchy. Wait until you are addressed. Show submission; measure your place.

Ludwig didn’t care to play the part of the patient recruit. He did not particularly respect hesitation as a virtue. He shifted his weight from one boot to the other, the soft scrape of leather on canvas a tiny protest in the hush. Yet even as he braced to speak, he noted the commander’s hands, callused at the edges, sure in their motions, and let himself read the room: she preferred command through control of time and attention. That told him enough. He could wait, but he didn’t have to appreciate it.

“So,” he began, the single syllable a thread stretched taut to pull conversation toward him.

“You’re not granted permission to speak,” the commander replied without looking up, her voice clipped and smooth as a drawn blade. She kept turning the page under her fingers, eyes fixed on figures and routes, as if his presence were a minor distraction at best. “Once I’m done I’ll deal with you. Stay put and stay silent.”

It wasn’t welcoming. The tone was deliberately brusque, the kind intended to make recruits fold inward. Ludwig felt a little flash of annoyance blossom under his skin, an animal reaction more than principle, but he let it cool under the practiced surface of his face.

“Pretty bold statement coming from an Elf.” The words pushed out before cooler judgment could intercept them; they were crisp, edged, meant to prod. A small nick of venom sat in the phrasing, not cruel but curious to see what response it would draw. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he spoke, gauging the way a man tests the tautness of a net by throwing a stone at its edge.

Shock crossed the commander’s face like a shadow. For the first time since he’d arrived, her hands stilled. The paper under her fingers creased where the motion halted. Muscles in her jaw worked once; surprise flickered, then, almost as quickly, astonishment reddened the moment. Her composure, the controlled mask she wore for the camp, had been nicked. Ludwig had meant to find that exact place.

“H-how?” Her voice came out thin, cut with real surprise. She blinked, unprepared for the precision of his strike. There was more than simple astonishment in it, an echo of alarm that someone had seen behind her crafted presentation.

Ludwig’s mouth drawn in a half-smile that kept the humor out of it. “The magic you’re using? Not gonna work on me.” He moved frontward another step and let his palms rest lightly on the table’s edge, as if to get closer to the maps but really to absorb the small, charged space between them. “After all, it’s obvious, what you use isn’t a simple glamour that alters a face. It’s an illusion that rearranges the mind, makes others see what you want them to. Powerful magic. But it affects perceptions, not bones. And I do not bend easy to such tricks.”

It was not quite boastful; it was fact. Ludwig felt the statement settle between them. The commander’s eyes flicked away, sharp as teeth. For all the tent’s shadowed corners and pinned dispatches, one truth had halted her work: the spell that made her appear a certain way could be read by him. A Black Mage… less susceptible to the mind’s flimsy snares. That knowledge wrapped around the conversation like armor.

With the reins of the exchange back in his hands, he drew closer to the table until he could see the thin, tidy script of the reports. “Quite interesting,” he said, letting the words sink with slow deliberation, “to see one of humanity’s enemies sitting in command of their armies. I wonder what storm would roll through this camp if the truth were revealed, what they’d say if they knew.” He let the hypothetical hang in the lamplight, watching for the motion of her face.

The commander straightened slowly, one shoulder setting like a hinge. “I can end you where you stand, do you want that?” she said, tone low, but it carried more a threat than a question.

“No, you won’t.” Ludwig shrugged as if the idea were a sliver of nonsense. He kept his voice level, a calm current under the surface. “It’ll take at least twenty exchanges between us before I’m dead. You think I won’t be able to tell the whole camp that the commander was killed and replaced by an elf?”

Her eyes hardened. “But I’m the commander, not some fake, even an elf!” she said. The protest was sharp and immediate, a hand thrown up at him in an impulse to reclaim ownership.

“I know.” Ludwig’s answer was almost soft. “But these people don’t.” He tapped the edge of a map with two fingers, the gesture casual but precise. “So, who do you think they’ll believe? An elf…or Davon, the hero of Tulmud?”

The click of her tongue was audible and quick, a small, annoyed sound. “She didn’t tell me you’d be this hard-headed,” she muttered. The admission was a fissure where respect and annoyance met.

“Hard-headed? Hardly,” Ludwig countered. He pivoted slightly, the cross of his arm leaning on the table as he regarded her. “I’m just handing back what was given to me. If you’d been candid from the beginning, none of this would have happened. Also, speaking of her, who was she? Seems like my presence was expected, besides my own knowledge of it,” The question slipped through with less steel and more curiosity, an attempt to widen the conversation beyond the ritual of power.

Her fingers tapped the map twice, the signal of a pause that was not surrender. “Someone you shouldn’t speak of,” she said finally, clipped. “Regardless, you’re not privy to that information. I’ll assign you to one of the mage corps barracks. Stay with them; you won’t be asked to fight nor see action until you’re summoned. Spend your six months there, and when the time is up, be gone.”

The old authoritative edge returned to her words as if she’d slid back into role armor. Ludwig bristled at the thought, stationed idle while the rest of the world was gnawed by war hitched in his bones like an irritation. He hated being told to wait.

“Seems like we’re back to that authoritative tone of yours…” he said, but kept his movement slow. He placed a hand inside his ring and let an object appear: small, golden, ridged, the kind of thing the untrained might miss for a golden nugget. He held it easily now in his palm and turned it as if it were a trifle.

The commander’s hand, which had been poised over a dispatch, twitched. In a heartbeat, instinct honed by command and life, she drew a long sword and placed the blade so that its flat lay along his neck like a ruler. The motion was so practiced it could have been rehearsed, but there was no humor in it. War had taught her efficiency: the blade at the throat stops a thousand arguments.

A small pause hung between the point of metal and his throat. The sword was cool, its edge catching the lamp-light as if measuring consequences. For a breath, tent and map and ink bent to the simple arithmetic: threat on throat, answer in mouth.

“Calm down there, no need to get your panties twisted,” Ludwig said, and the words came out with the kind of levity that might have been called mockery elsewhere. He kept his voice low, smooth, composed, he wanted to take the sting out of the sword’s meaning without sliding into cowardice.

He opened his palm. On it, with the casualness of someone showing a trinket, he presented a small golden acorn. The acorn’s cap was rough and mottled; the nut gleamed faintly as if polished. He offered it as though it were nothing at all, and the tent’s air shifted.

“You recognize this?”