Deus Necros

The guard beside him made a fist and pressed it against her heart. The movement was quick, with respect to the person who appeared. The image flicked her gaze to the guard, registered the salute, and set the drowsiness aside like a cup. The softness left her face.

“Oh, seems like you met a familiar person,” the commander said, tone gone level. “What’s the situation?”

“Profane Ritual, torture and imprisonment,” Ludwig said. He angled the crystal. The image drank the scene and reflected it, cages, slack faces, the tree’s ulcerous swellings, the filth-slick stone. “Also, I have obtained evidence suggesting the involvement of demonic entities.” He brought the vial up. The little thing tapped the projection and rang against it like glass against glass. “This is a parasitic creation. It harbors something that transforms whoever consumes it into half a demon, and this ritual tree here… looks like it creates fruits whose seed is the source of these pills.”

“That’s some big news… this should force the church’s hand now,” the commander said. The way she said church contained a history of long council meetings and longer grudges.

“Huh? I thought you didn’t want the church to be involved,” Ludwig said. He watched her eyes rather than her mouth.

“When did I ever say that,” she replied. One brow rose. “The church is hiding behind our soldiers’ backs. They’re using us as meat shields. With this now, my soldiers can rest for a bit. The Holy Order has to send in the big guns… where are you right now?”

“Mission location,” Ludwig said. He lowered the crystal, squatted, brushed aside a curtain of roots with two fingers. Bones slept underneath. Grey cloth. The iron tooth of a buckle. “I located those you sent and neutralized all hostiles.” He shifted the view. “They used your soldiers as fertilizer for the tree, and I think they planned on using these captured humans to produce more of said seeds.”

The commander took a long breath he could hear even through the shimmer. Not shock. Not even anger. The breath of someone shelving personal reaction so professional action could walk by. “Good job,” she said. She did not make the word sound warm; she made it sound like a door that needed to be opened was now open. “That’s mission complete for you then. You should head back, I’ll send a force to your location.”

“I can’t,” Ludwig said. “I have to head deeper into the enemy territory, I need to see this to the end.”

“Are you defying your commander?” she asked. The question landed like a knife laid on a table beside another knife.

Ludwig held her gaze, and for a heartbeat the cavern’s rhythm lined up with the pulse in his temple. He did not lift the corner of his mouth, did not tilt his head, did not speak, but the look he gave her was a hand pressed flat against a locked drawer with a name carved into it. ’I know your secret,’ the look said. Don’t try me.

She sighed, and the sigh was not the surrender it might have been. It was the venting of pressure to prevent an explosion. “This is why hierarchy is important,” she said, and the words came like she was reminding herself rather than him. “I’m not pulling you back from action, I’m doing worse, sending you right to its heart. With the knowledge that this is propagated by demonic entities, the Hero and the Holy Order are forced to make a move. That means you, as one of the greatest contributors to the accidents that happened in Tulmud, your presence is desperately needed in the frontline.”

“How so? You don’t make any sense,” Ludwig said. His tone did not rise. It cooled.

“Think about it,” she said. “The Church’s hero is summoned from another world. Sure, he might be strong and he’ll bring the morale of the church, but you, you’re a child of Ikos. Your presence alone is enough to bring the morale of the human army up. If you make achievements, you’ll bring the morale up for the humans that are fighting this war. We don’t want outsiders to win battles for us.”

Child of Ikos, that made Ludwig laugh inwardly.

“I’m no hero,” Ludwig said. The word sat wrong in his mouth. The system never had a [Title: Hero] pane open when he looked at himself. It had other things. Well not after he died the first time.

“That’s not what everyone is thinking,” she replied. A corner of her mouth moved, not a smile. The motion of someone who has learned how much use can be wrung from a misunderstanding. “Come back, we’ll talk more.” She cut the line.

Silence returned, if the heartbeat could be called that. The guard was still at his shoulder, gaze fixed on the tree with a look as if she were watching a flood approach a threshold she had been ordered to hold. The prisoners had fallen whisper-quiet, listening in the way the desperate listen, trying to guess from stances and angles and breaths whether their fates had moved a finger’s width either way.

Ludwig rolled the seed-pellet between forefinger and thumb. “Disgusting thing.”

He looked back to the tree and memorized the pattern of grafts, the cut marks on the bark, the residue at the base of each fruit stem. He mapped the work in his head and the hands that had done it. Then he turned.

“What now?

“We clear the way out. Then we clear what’s left, the commander will send people for these guys here, we’ll unlock the cages first.” he said.

Soon Ludwig began destroying the cages letting the people leave, but most of them couldn’t simply exit, they were too wounded to even move. And some, the moment the cage broke, outright died. Perhaps the fact that they held on for so long and now they no longer had to, their bodies simply gave up.

Hope can sometimes be a deadly thing.

“We can’t take you with us, but if you wait here for a day or so a group of soldiers will come and get you,” Ludwig said as he waved his ring, several dozen packs of rations poured out, “Use these for sustenance for now.” He added.

He turned to the guard, “We need to go now.”

The guard nodded once, sharp. Duty found the part of her that cruelty had not made small. She moved with him. The Djinn-torches at the mouth raged and sputtered at nothing, casting hallucinations of figures leaping that were not there. They did not see the two figures step past them; they were busy screaming.

Outside again, under trees that never saw true sun, the night seemed oddly sweet. He could breathe rot without gagging after the cave.

He did not sheath his sword until they reached the first outer ring of traps. He crouched, severed wires, broke teeth from iron jaws, locked counterweights in place with wedged stones. The guard watched his hands and learned. By the time they were done, her pulse had slowed enough that it no longer rang in her ears.

“I’ll send word to my people, these guys will probably not last long enough even with the rations you gave them.”

“They’ll not like seeing elves,” Ludwig said.

“They were imprisoned with some elves, it think their worries are more serious than some racism.”

“That’s fair enough… then I hate to not get to the end of this, but I have to return to the army.”

Ludwig took a step forward and the trees simply parted for him.