Deus Necros

He held the pill between thumb and forefinger now, as far from his palm as possible without making a show of revulsion. The word egg sat sour on his tongue.

The guard’s face had the expression of someone who was about to throw up. “They consume that?” She spoke as if the question itself might summon the act. Her throat worked under the collar of her leathers.

“I guess so, trading their bodies for power. Regardless, how does one even obtain something like this… things are getting more complicated,” Ludwig sighed.

He slipped the pellet into a small glass phial from his ring and sealed it with a twist. The click of the stopper sounded too loud in the quiet. The thing kept ticking inside the glass like a patient insect.

Because with this thing revealed, it would mean that the Holy Order just obtained more sway in this battle, once a war between countries is touched with the demonic, the religious cult of the Holy Order would takeover the command.

He could see the banners already, white and gold and self-righteous, priests with clean hands giving orders to men with dirty ones. Lines of supply shifting, generals made obedient by sermons and threat. The forest would fill with hymns and burnings. And the Holy order cares not for the safety and sanctity of anyone or anything. As long as their doctrines are confirmed and applied, everything can go to hell and back for all they care.

The Holy Order would take the reins, and the Empire would simply be the supporting group instead. Command would travel to the sanctified and away from the skilled. He didn’t have to see it to know. Results would followed, but slowly, and with more corpses. And everyone will have to thank the order in the end.

Clementine’s been striking gold lately with all of what’s going on with the world. With this event, his seat as the pope is nothing but secured.

Though none of it mattered to Ludwig, it just simply meant that he’ll have less opportunities to use Dark magic if he was drawn to the main battlefield. For now, far away from the eyes of both the empire and the Holy Order, he can use his magic.

Simple Black Magic is far too useless against these things. Ludwig’s mastery over his physical form and battle had already reached its peak, albite for his current level that is. But his magic understanding was far lacking. So finding more opportunities to use it to master and train it would be cumbersome. His hands knew what to do before thought. His spells did not. Every fight asked him to choose, and the body answered first. The amulet cooled. The Heart listened like a dog on a short leash.

’I can’t rely on the heart. It’s already proving problematic, especially without the armor to contain it.’ Ludwig thought about the cube of pure metal in his inventory. Once he is strong enough to use it. Things will change.

“What now?” the guard asked. Returning Ludwig back to reality.

She had not moved closer to the phial. Her arrow remained nocked without drawing. Her eyes kept a hard hold on the cave mouth.

Ludwig glanced forward, at the mouth of the cave.

“The effect of frenzied sprits is still active, the Djinns are mindless creatures as long as they’re affected, so let’s hurry down and see what they’re hiding inside that cave.”

His voice went practical. A plan layered itself over the nerves of the place. Time stretched, then flattened into the simple length between them and the mouth.

Ludwig walked first, making sure not to trip on any wires or step into any of the traps, the guard followed after him, making sure that she stepped wherever he did to not trigger anything, she subconsciously began to follow his lead. He placed his feet where the loam held a darker damp rather than the brittle gray of settled leaf. He let his blade tip mark a root here, a stone there, so her boots could find the same rhythm. The night tasted of soot, of animal pens left too long uncleaned, of old fear. And the closer they got to the cave, the more the stench rose. Something was rotting inside it. And it wasn’t good.

Once at the entrance, Ludwig ignored the roaring flames on the torches, they won’t regain their sanity any time soon, so he hurried down instead of taking care of them, after all a none physical entity like a Djinn would be hard to kill until it is no longer in its formless form.

The fire regarded them with hungry, blind attention and did not leap. The heat from it did not warm his face. He did not gift it the dignity of a look. Stone swallowed their shapes as they entered, the sound of their steps changing from brush-scratch to a small, hard echo.

The cave itself had an incline to it that led further down, there were more torches down the path but none of them seemed to be affected by [Frenzied Spirits] which meant that they were normal torches. So far their entry was sound, and no one was knowledgeable of. If there were enemies inside, they would have already attacked.

The incline drew them like a long sigh into the earth. Drips talked to each other across the ceiling, counting time. The normal flames breathed like proper fire, smoke licking the roof in brown tongues and leaving soot flowers where the rock pinched. Shadows lay steady on the walls instead of writhing, proof enough that his spell had not reached here.

Ludwig continued his pathing down with eyes peeled for any sudden attacks or traps that might be hidden within the cave, but soon came to the realization that most of the traps were outside, as they probably never thought that anyone would reach here in the first place.

Boot prints overlapped in old mud, smaller and larger, some fresh enough to hold a sheen. He counted pairs without trying.

The space opened without warning. A stink rose up to meet them that was part rot, part fear-sweat that had nowhere to go, part iron. The cages were iron too, hammered rough, straw matted to filth around the bars. Some were bolted to the rock, others stacked and lashed with rope dark with old use. A steady rattle ran through the room breaths, coughs insufficiently swallowed, a bare foot shifting against metal.

Eyes blinked out of hollows. Ears torn ragged lay flat against skulls. Fur thinned on a beastkin’s arms where shackles chafed. A human woman’s wrist ended in a bandage the color of dried clay. Someone whispered a prayer in a dialect older than the Empire. Someone else laughed too softly and kept laughing.

This was a prison, a prison for people who looked too weak to protect themselves. Not only that, it was a prison for people who didn’t belong to this region. If the invaders had captured civilians, then most of them if not all should have been nothing but elves. But this… this is different.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Ludwig asked as he realized that there was something here that he saw before.

The words left him level and landed heavy. The guard’s hand rose to her mouth and stayed there, not to hide surprise, but to hold down bile. The torchlight crawled up the far wall and showed a stain that was not soot and had not dried.

Back at Rima.

The memory came with the smell first. Then the structure. Then the sound a tree makes when it is asked to do a thing trees were not born for.

A corrupted tree, a Ritual a Profane Ritual…

His gaze found the anchor-point before the rest of him wanted to. Roots that were not roots threaded the floor, black veins pulsing inward toward a central stump that had been carved into a bowl. Sap, or something that had learned to pretend to be sap, had crusted along the rim and run in fingers down the side. Talismans hung from a line above it, bones pierced and strung, hair braided into cords, feathers dipped in pitch to make them shining and wrong. The air around the thing felt thicker, the way air does before a storm, only this storm would not wash anything clean. He set his feet, and for a heartbeat the cave seemed to tilt, as if the world had leaned to see what he would do next.

[You have discovered a Profane Ritual]

[Ritual of Pain]

The tree itself looked like it had fruit that was shaped into the head of demons, spread sparsely all over the place, and beneath the roots, the remains of what looked like one of the captured people. A bound corpse with chain and iron, stuck under roots that knew not the meaning of mercy, as they tore through their skin and body, nourishing the tree by blood.

And this was happening once again in the empire.