Deus Necros

The swamp stirred around Ludwig like a breathing thing.

The ground trembled once, twice, then split apart as the great salamander hauled itself from the mud. Its body was a cathedral of bone and rot: ribs bent like the frames of ships, vertebrae cracking wetly as black water sluiced from between them. Strips of dead flesh clung where tendons had once been, hanging in tatters from the gleaming ivory.

Two orbs of false life blinked open in its skull, luminescent, cloudy, yet disturbingly focused. They fixed on Ludwig as though trying to recall what it meant to see. Deformations crowned its head: a ring of cartilage growths that rose like thorns or the beginnings of antlers. When it breathed, it did so in a sound that was not quite air but the hiss of grave dust escaping an empty lung.

“Good,” Ludwig said, voice calm, almost approving. “You’ll do. You’ll be my ride from now on.”

His words rolled through the mist like a commandment.

From his shoulder Thomas’s voice drifted, rough and doubtful. “You really mean to use that thing as a mount? You’ll be spotted before you’re ten miles in any direction.”

Ludwig’s answer was a small, humorless smile. “By who? Crows?”

He rested one palm against the salamander’s flank; the surface was uneven and cold, like polished marble coated in dew. “We just need to cross fast. If someone catches sight of us, well, let them wonder what kind of nightmare travels the swamp by daylight. Besides,” he added with a faint snort, “what are they going to do, report to their superiors that one of their enemies is using dark magic? To whom their enemies, the Holy Order? Hah”

Thomas sighed. “You never did learn subtlety.”

Ludwig crouched and vaulted upward, his boots thudding against the beast’s back. The impact made the creature flex under him like a shifting hill. The smell was awful, moss and meat, but he settled easily into place, his balance sure.

Thomas hovered alongside. “You could have raised something smaller, you know. A dire wolf like those we saw in Solania. Or a damn horse… maybe. Not… this.”

“This was closest, and where will I get a corpse of those… though you do make a point, I should get one…” Ludwig said simply. He ran his hand along one of the bony ridges that jutted like horns from the salamander’s neck. “Still don’t underestimate Salamanders. Living ones move quick through the marsh, half swimming, half running. Take away hunger, fear, exhaustion…” He gave the ridge a tap. “And what you get is endurance that never ends on an all terrain mount.”

Thomas muttered, “Still ugly as sin.”

“Function over form.” Ludwig said and then tapped it on the neck “Make Haste!”

The order hit the air like a crack of thunder.

The undead salamander lurched, then surged forward. The first stride threw half the swamp behind it. Black water fountained in its wake; reeds whipped sideways, flattened beneath waves of displaced air. Another stride, and it was already moving faster than a galloping horse.

Ludwig bent low against its spine, the wind of motion pulling strands of hair loose from their tie. The noise of their passing drowned everything, the slosh of water, the bellow of the creature’s throat, the whistling of air over bone.

For a moment, Thomas’s spirit lagged behind, his spectral outline blurring into the mist. “Wait, you insanely fast bastard!”

He caught up a heartbeat later, half-transparent and bristling. Ludwig’s grin greeted him; his eyes gleamed bright red under the gloom.

“Fine,” the Thomas said, settling cross-legged on Ludwig’s shoulder like a ghostly hawk. “I admit, it’s impressive.”

The salamander tore across the mire, each stride devouring yards. Mud and rot splashed upward only to slide harmlessly from its spectral hide. Roots cracked, water boiled, insects vanished in the wake of its aura. It didn’t falter once. To something that no longer lived, distance had no meaning.

Hours might have passed, or minutes. Time stretched thin when one moved at the pace of storms. The horizon slid by in shades of gray and green.

Ludwig felt almost at peace in the motion. The rhythm of impact, the smell of wet earth and decay. He and the freedom of acting alone. Though forced to participate in this war, he was worried that he’ll be under scrutiny, but thanks to the special circumstances of the commander, he got more leeway in action. Though it looked like he was enjoying the ride and carefree, even in motion, his instincts never dulled.

A pulse crawled up the back of his neck, familiar, electric. The old feeling of danger tightening its coil. His grip on the horn-ridge tightened, and his head turned just slightly.

“You feel that?” he asked quietly.

“I do.” The Knight King’s tone grew hard, the ease in his voice gone. “Something’s watching.”

“Killing intent,” Ludwig murmured. “Not random either. It’s deliberate.”

“Not human.”

“No,” Ludwig agreed. “Too steady for that.” His gaze swept the murk ahead. The mists here thickened, rolling low over a broad pond whose surface was strangely still. No frog croaked, no insect dared to hum. The smell of stagnant blood hung in the air like warning.

He felt the salamander slow beneath him, uneasy despite its lack of soul. Ripples began to form across the pond, first small, then widening, heavy, rhythmic.

“Front,” Thomas said.

“I see it.”

The ripples built into waves. Then the water exploded.

The swamp erupted in front of them like a breaking dam. A column of filthy water shot skyward, shredding reeds and branches as something vast surged up from the depths. The air itself went cold and wet; the reek of old blood hit Ludwig’s senses before the shape fully emerged.

Rows of jagged teeth broke the surface first, white and yellow and endless. Behind them came the rest of the head, scaled, ridged, gleaming like obsidian beneath the gray light. The creature’s jaws could have swallowed a wagon whole. It rose higher and higher, its back cresting the surface like the hull of a sunken ship returning to life.

Even for Ludwig, who had faced horrors beyond reason, the sheer size of it forced him still for an instant. “Now that,” he muttered under his breath, “is overcompensation.”