Deus Necros

[Warning: Steamy scene incoming]

Soon after, they arrived to one of the city’s largest temples. The Temple of the Sun, and the moment they arrived, the priestess was immediately expected by several other nuns and holy men. The courtyard stones kept a careful coolness, shaded by date palms that had learned to listen for water. Brass bowls smoked with resin. The door lintel was scored with prayer and heat.

“You are back, how was the ceremony?” one of the people wearing nothing but a robe made of rough material, that was barely comfortable to wear or be in, and definitely felt itchy just to look at asked. His hair had been cut so close it made him look newly hatched. His feet were bare and brown and uncomplaining.

“Good, and rewarding,” she turned to the Guard Knight, “But I need treatment, the Guard Knight is severely feverish.” She looked at the man who was finally letting go, having gotten a bit of rest on the back of the mount was enough to make him slightly more relaxed and the fever a bit less pervasive.

“Come come!” the man said and several other men wearing similar uncomfortable robes rushed out, they grabbed the man and took him inside. The knight sagged without shame the moment other hands accepted his weight. Fever loosened his jaw. A thread of thanks fell out.

“Does this servant of Necros need to rest somewhere?” the man said to Ludwig. Which caught him by surprise, did he know who he was?

“He means the mount,” the priestess said, explaining the situation.

“Oh… I thought you said servant of Necros.” Ludwig tried to make sense of the holy man.

“Well, it is undead, is it not, so it is a servant of Necros.” Explained casually.

“I guess you’re right… and wrong at the same time.” Ludwig’s replied flatly.

“Please do correct me then,” he said. The acolyte’s smile was thin and genuine. He liked to be shown a finer edge on a thought.

“The dead never tire…” Ludwig said simply.

“Indeed…” the man looked at the creature and simply pointed, “You can put it in the shade there, if it remains put, then it is all good. The garden to the temple of the sun is large enough, but please don’t allow it inside the temple. The power of the Sun will simply burn it to a crisp.” He did not say it with malice. It was a weather report.

“I can already sense its discomfort,” Ludwig said as he noticed the cringe on the salamander’s face. The beast’s eyes had narrowed to wet slits. It licked its own teeth. He waved a hand and it simply turned to smoke that dove into Ludwig’s side. Entering the hidden codex. The air sighed as if a tent had been struck.

“Ah, proficient in Necromancy, your kind is very rare. Please follow us, we need to discuss some manners regarding a few very important things.” The priest’s tone shifted to the careful hospitality reserved for complications.

While Ludwig followed the priest and the priestess inside the temple. Several other people outside the temple that noticed them were speaking and pointing fingers. The story left their mouths already improved. A ring became ten. A slap became a severing. A slave became a lover and then something worth a hymn.

Word began spreading about what happened in the market, and it spread far faster than one could expect. And definitely not in the way one would even think or realize. A water seller put it into a joke and sold more cups. A scribe wrote it as a warning and then laughed at his own seriousness. By sundown even the bakers knew that a priestess had kept an arm to teach jewelry manners. And all that for a slave.

***

A couple of days later at night.

The moans rolled through the palace like a fever, thick and unrelenting. They echoed off the sandstone walls, slipping past silk-draped archways and into the hazy desert night. Every gasp, every shuddering cry, carried the same hungry pulse… pleasure wound tight, then unraveling in bursts of slick, breathless abandon. The sound made lantern light look warmer than it was. Curtains breathed. Carpets held footprints that would be gone by morning.

Behind the chamber’s heavy cedar doors, bodies moved in a sweat-slicked tangle. Limbs intertwined, fingers digging into flesh. A woman arched against silk sheets, her hips rolling as someone’s mouth dragged down her spine. Someone else’s tongue flicked against her throat. The air was heavy with musk and salt, the sound of skin slapping skin beneath the rhythmic creak of the bed. Anklets chimed against ankles. The bed ropes thrummed and held. And there was a tinge of pink mist spreading through the palace. It slid along baseboards and under thresholds, a blush turned into weather.

A couple of the maids were eavesdropping near the door, drooling almost as they gripped their own crotch trying to scratch an itch that never tried to subside. Their breath fogged the lacquer. One bit the soft part of her thumb and did not feel it. Heat made them sway.

“You think it’ll be our turn soon?”

“Don’t be too loud…” the other maid said, “Still, you heard… that the priestess of the moon bought a strong slave for her pleasure.” The words came out in a whisper that wanted to be a giggle and failed, tripping on its own want.

“Oh, really? Aren’t they supposed to be chaste, for the moon god only?” The first maid pressed her ear harder to the panel and shivered like a cat that wants a door to vanish.

“Well, apparently the boy she got was good enough that she might renounce her position. She even cut the hand of Gulim’s richest merchant for him.” The maid’s eyes shone with reflected scandal. She did not question how the story had become a hand and then an arm and then a proposal. Stories in palaces fatten faster than livestock.

“Ah, that’s some tea I didn’t know I needed, tell me more…” The first maid’s laughter crawled up her throat and died there in a small shake.

Just as the servant was about to go into details they both noticed that something was wrong. The constant clapping had stopped. The ropes fell quiet. The mist held itself still, as if listening. Even the little charcoal brazier near the door smoldered without a sound, its smoke drifting straight instead of swaying.

Then… silence. A pause. The doors swung open. The brass rings bit into their hooks without haste. A woman stepped forward, the thin linen barely clinging to her curves as the desert wind caught the fabric, teasing glimpses of dark nipples, the swell of her hips, the glistening slickness between her thighs. Her skin shimmered, not just with sweat but with something darker, an unnatural sheen, like oil catching fire. The scent of her was overwhelming: musk, salt, and something richer, deeper, sin distilled into heat.

Behind her, the chamber lay strewn with bodies… men and women sprawled across divans, their chests still heaving, muscles slack with exhaustion. Spent hands hung palm up. A cup lay on its side, and the wine inside it did not yet remember to flow. She smirked, licking a drop of sweat from her wrist. The maids did not know whether to drop to their knees or run. The mist coiled at her ankles like a tame serpent waiting to be told what to want next.

Seeing their reaction, her eyelids closed slowly like a cat in comfort.

Her lips parted, tongue dragging slow over her teeth. “What you just said…about that slave… tell me more…” Her voice was a purr, thick with amusement.