Deus Necros

Ludwig’s reaction was instant as he drew Durandal preparing for a battle, “You guys are making a mistake,” Ludwig said.

The blade cleared its way out of Ludwig’s ring with a clean, low note that cut through the forest hush. He set his feet without thinking, weight evenly split, the boy’s breath quickened as he realized blood was about to be spilled. Sap-sour air pressed close between trunks; the canopy filtered the light into silver metal bracelet that striped Ludwig’s left sleeve. He held his gaze level, not at any one bowstring but at the spaces between them where decisions were made.

“STOP!” the boy howled. “He isn’t a bad guy! He said he knew lady Ulesse!” the kid shouted.

The cry broke against the leaves and came back thinner. It pulled a dozen sights off Ludwig and onto the small figure half-hidden by his cloak. The boy’s throat worked after the shout, as if the word had been heavier than his ribs could carry. He flinched at his own boldness, yet did not take the words back.

The group of Elves looked at each other, and Ludwig immediately felt it.

A soft rustle moved along the branches, the sound of cloth and bark touching. It was not uncertainty; it was measure. A herd deciding whether to run or to lower horns. The air itself drew in around Ludwig’s shoulders, tighter, colder. He recognized the moment when a hand he could not see began to close.

He grabbed the kid as rapidly as he could, and placed him behind his back “Tenebris!” He howled as he pushed his palm forward. His hand opened to the dark, and the dark answered. It gathered from the cracks in the world like water rises in a well, forming a sphere so black it made shadows nearby look gray. The first arrows arrived with the angry whisper of split air; the globe drank them without ripple, feathers and head and shaft slipping into that hunger as if into deep mud. The boy jolted against Ludwig’s spine and went still. Bowstrings thrummed in quick sequence, quick enough that any pause between them vanished. Each bite of sound ended the same way, swallowed.

“BOUNDS OF LATVIA!” Ludwig howled as he stomped a foot down.

The earth answered his heel with a dull thud that ran through roots. Light like bruised amethyst broke the leaf mold, long links rising as if the forest floor were a lake and these were anchors hauled from it. The chains coiled with a will of their own, loops finding wrists and torsos and bow-arms, ringing bark as they snapped tight around trunks to pin lean bodies against them. The bindings smelled faintly of cold iron and wet stone. The spell drew taut and held, humming in Ludwig’s bones.

Only one of the elven assailants managed to escape from the chains while the rest were all wrapped up and locked in place.

She moved with a flick of pale hair and a turn of the ankle that took her through a gap where two chains crossed and left a breath of space. Her leap landed in silence on a slanted branch above, arrow nocked, shoulders angled toward Ludwig with bright, hard focus. The others strained, testing links, the sound like a chorus of tightened leather.

“LET THE BOY GO! YOU WILL NOT GET OUT OF THIS FOREST ALIVE IF NOT!”

The voice carried the steadiness of command. It came from the one who had dodged, high in the green, each word clipped, as if she cut them free with a knife before throwing them.

“You have things confused, your guys are the ones being held hostage not me.” Ludwig said as he pointed Durandal at the leader, “Not to mention why are you so adamant about taking both me and the kid from your own tribe out?”

He did not lift the blade high, only enough so that the line of it drew directly to her center. His tone stayed level, not goading, not pleading. The boy’s fingers caught in the back of Ludwig’s cloak and held as if cloth could be bark. Ludwig kept his body between the small weight behind him and the vectors of every drawn string.

“You’re the one using him as a shield!”

Leaves stirred with the sharpness of the accusation. The word shield snapped like a twig underfoot. A few of the bound elves jerked against the chains as if the accusation had dragged them forward.

“I’ve never seen a shield placed behind its user,” Ludwig replied as he in fact was shielding the boy from the elves’ arrows.

He felt the boy’s breath push against his spine as the words landed. He kept his gaze on the archer’s eyes, not the arrowhead, because eyes committed before fingers did. He did not move the sword. He did not move at all.

“Seem like they got something against you,” Ludwig muttered to the boy. “These aren’t your friends.”

He pitched the words low so only the child would catch them, a small thread of sound under the larger noise of creaking bindings. The boy’s grip loosened, then tightened again, confusion and fear twisting through his fingers.

“Stop poisoning his thoughts!” the elf leader howled, “And let my men go!”

Anger flared around the edges of her control, bright as a spark. The bound elves’ faces stayed composed, but their muscles told the truth against the chains. The purple light pulsed once, steadying them.

“You think I’ll just do that? It’s a pretty unconvincing request.” Ludwig said, the elves bound by the purple chains were struggling to get free, but as long as Ludwig had the mana for it, none of them was going to be walking from here without his will.

He felt the spell’s pull along the lines of his arms and into the center of his chest, a steady draw, sustainable. He counted the beats of his heart and the rhythm of his breath, calculus done over years now performed without looking. The boy’s weight kept him honest, kept him quiet where he might otherwise have stepped forward.

Without any notice or alert, a sapling tore out of the ground, twisting and uncoiling around itself, leaves and branches grew until it became a large tree that sprouted right between the two forces.

The earth bulged as if a creature below had taken a slow breath. A green spear pushed up, shook off soil, then swelled with impossible speed. Bark rippled into being, smooth, then ridged, darkening as if years were racing along it. Branches unfurled from the trunk like fingers stretching after sleep. The smell of fresh-cut wood filled the air, sharp and sweet, and a clean chill rode a small wind that had not been there a heartbeat before.

Then the trunk of the tree simply uncovered itself, opening up to reveal magic that felt familiar yet distant, space magic mixed with something…earthly and warm. Nature itself as if.

The wood parted along an invisible seam and turned inward like a pair of doors folding on themselves. Beyond the opening there was no hollow; there was a depth that did not belong inside a tree, a room that was not a room. A slow, living heat drifted out, carrying the scent of rain on dry soil and crushed clover. The Tenebris sphere shivered, its surface dimpled by that other presence, then steadied.

Ludwig was surprised by the sudden manifestation of the tree, and was more so surprised by who came out from inside it after. A woman wearing full maid clothing, white of hair and clear blue eyes. She also had elven ears and heritage from her look. She turned her head twice, to see Ludwig and the bound elves.

Her shoes made no sound upon the new-grown wood. The crisp fall of her skirt contrasted the wildness around her, a neat geometry walking out of a dream. Her hair was pale as birch bark, her gaze as clear as the sky one sees only on high winter mornings. The long, tapered ears marked her, but her bearing belonged to a house that had never bled on its own floors. She took in the sphere of shadow, the chains, the tilted arrow, and the small boy behind Ludwig with the kind of calm that has already measured a hundred such rooms.

“Her ladyship askes you all to refrain all assault and come inside,” the woman said.

Her voice made the leaves hold still. It did not force; it arranged. The words seemed to fit into the new tree’s heartbeat, as if it had grown to carry them.

Ludwig frowned, he wasn’t about to trust some random person, but just then something charged at him and stuck to his face.

The movement was a blur of light and wing, a soft weight landing where instincts said to put steel. His arm rose before he could think, pivot of shoulder already feeding power into a cut that would have split whatever it was from crown to heel.

He was one second away from splitting it in half, but when he didn’t notice any bloodlust he stopped.

The weight clung with the familiarity of a creature that had never learned to fear him. No malice, only the effusive joy of something small that had found something it liked. The boy behind him squeaked and then laughed once, high and breathless, as the small thing’s wings tickled his cheek.

“Ludwig!” he heard.

The name came like a bell he had not heard in years and still recognized.

Opening and closing his eyes from surprise, it was a small fairy “Lipsi?” Ludwig said.

The creature leaned back in midair, hands on hips no bigger than thumb joints, hair a wild tumble like dandelion seed ready to fly. Her teeth flashed. The forest light clung to her as if she were a piece of it that had learned to talk.

This was Lorina Ulesse’s fairy. The one from back then, From Mira.