Deus Necros

“But how are we going to catch him?” Tull asked. His voice kept itself low though the question pressed hard, and his hand hovered near the hilt he had taken earlier, a habit that grew stronger whenever the city pulled its cloak tight around them. The alley held its stale breath. A loose shutter clicked somewhere above and went still again.

“I told you, she’ll get him. The problem is the aftermath… once the fight breaks… it won’t be nice, also I think sir prince here gotta hide, can’t have the royal die on us here…” Redd said. He did not look at them when he spoke. His head angled as a hound’s does when it tests the wind, and the rough imprint of the collar about his throat rose and fell with the slow measure of his breath.

“I’m more than capable of carrying my own weight. So you don’t have to worry,” the prince said. He did not raise his voice. The certainty traveled quiet, a line of iron under cloth, and it settled the air for a heartbeat.

Redd’s head suddenly snapped to the side. The movement was clean and without show, the simple answer of a body that had caught a thread no one else could touch. “Then better start proving it. We found him,” he said and began sprinting through the alleyways.

Tull looked at the prince and nodded to him, the brief exchange all the signal needed, then the two began following after. The alley opened and narrowed and opened again between leaning walls, and their steps learned the rhythm without wasting a breath. Shoes slid over dust and struck stone. A hanging basket of dates brushed a shoulder and spun once, slow, like a pendulum marking the hunt.

Though it was getting dark, and the lights of the night began turning more grim where few lanterns and torches lit the way, for Redd, it felt like it was still daytime. His half beast half man body was more than capable of adapting to the darkness. The red of his hair showed once when he crossed a slice of lamp light, then the night took it again. He paced between shadow and dim like a creature that had been born here.

People were surprised to see the three sprinting through dark alleyways with a purpose in mind, and rare were those that tried to stop them. A woman gathering her laundry drew back against her door and pressed arms full of cloth to her chest. A boy with a clay jar hesitated at a step and then leapt back to let them pass, eyes wide and unblinking. A cat started from a sill and vanished deeper into the street. The smell of fried dough and old oil came and went. The sound of their passage rolled before them and then folded in behind like water.

Just then, Redd smashed into the door of one of the more inconspicuous buildings of the city. The wood split under his shoulder with a tired crack, hinges giving a small defeated cry. He drove through the frame and revealed the inside of it. A small home of mud and clay where there was nothing but some old furniture and two bodies. One of an old woman, with her neck ripped open and the other of a child currently being held in the air, body pale and blue, not breathing while what looked like darkness was engulfing her.

The air in the room was colder than the hall behind, as if something had drunk the warmth as well as the breath. A small clay lamp guttered on a low shelf and then was still. The straw mat in the corner showed the pressed shape of knees where someone had prayed or begged. A cracked bowl had spilled a fan of dried lentils that did not move. The wet sound at the child’s throat ended. The body shuddered once, then its muscles relaxed to the finality of life.

Dropping on the ground like an empty husk without soul or blood left in it. Eyes opened, and fear painted on her young face. The mouth had gathered itself to a question that would never be asked. Redd’s jaw hardened. Tull did not speak. The prince’s eyes took in the room once, the door again, then the floor, as if the stone itself might betray where life had gone.

The shadows soon morphed, reforming themselves into a shape they remembered, that of Ludwig Heart a fake one at that. Someone is trying really hard to drag his image through the mud. The figure drew itself out of the black as if poured. The angle of the shoulders, the cut of the jaw, even the quiet tilt of the head were used like stolen tools.

“Ah, how annoying,” it said and dove into the ground. The floor drank it like water receives a knife, without a mark to show for it.

“What is going on?” a couple of guards soon showed up, and saw the three that had broken into the house. Their torches threw harsh light that turned the clay walls into flame color and pulled every shadow long.

“Hey you! What are you guys doing?” The words struck more from fear than authority. None of them could find the time to reply or explain. And the situation would get uglier if they were to be confused with the murderer.

The guard moved his torch and had its light shine into the house only for his face to turn paler than the corpse on the ground. His mouth opened and forgot to close. He struggled to get his sword out, leather sticking, fingers stiff. “GUARDS” he shouted with all his might, “GUARDS!” he howled again and you could hear several other footsteps approaching fast toward the group. The call carried along the lane, bounced off the stone, and multiplied.

“There is a monster on the loose!” Redd said as he walked out of the house. He lifted his hands where the fire could see them. The smell of blood wrapped around him like a cloak he did not want.

“DON’T MOVE!” the guard howled as he pointed his weapon at the three. The point trembled despite the shout.

“This is getting annoying should I take care of him.” Tull’s voice had shed patience, though his eyes never left the dark fringe of the room, where the last ripple of shadow had sunk.

“Don’t, the guards of this city aren’t as weak as you might think,” Redd said as he got out with hands held up. He cut a glance at the prince, then at the doorframe, making a small ledger in his head of time spent here, blades in sight, witnesses arriving. He did not wish to add another corpse to the ones that lay cooling on the floor behind.

More than a dozen guards immediately showed up and surrounded the house, boots drumming the dust into a low hanging cloud. “Calm down,” Redd said. His voice did not rise with theirs. It slid under the noise and asked it to set itself down.

“Euh, Redd? What’s going on?” one of the guards asked as he seemed to have noticed the red head. Recognition turned his stance from wide to watchful.

“Also, where are your cuffs? No way you got your freedom form that fucker.” The guard said. The torchlight found the raw band of skin where iron had spent too long.

“Actually I did, and the bastard we’re chasing is the cause…”

“The cause? Not the reason?”

“No, the cause, he almost killed the boss… well not that he deserve to be called boss now I’m free. So he had to unshackle me to save him. Still, he ran away, and now we’re hunting him down.” Redd kept it short. Too many words while blood dried on stone make men deaf.

“Where is he then? There is only one door in that house, if he went inside he should still be there…”

“No,” Redd shook his head. “He escaped.” He gestured once to the floor without taking a step. The memory of the child’s last shiver kept him where he stood.

“I was here the whole time!” the first guard said as he pointed his sword closer to Redd, “No one but you came inside the house!”

“Dark magic,” the prince was the first to speak. “That creature was using dark magic, he fused with the ground once we got inside.” He did not attempt to soften the word. The truth of what they had seen was uglier than any explanation.

“We’ll have to take you with us for questioning!” the guard said with caution and a lot of disbeliefe in his tone.

“You’re wasting our time, he’ll be out there killing more people if we don’t stop him,” Redd said. He spoke evenly, but the words lifted the hair on the neck. It was not threat. It was a simple measure of how quickly a blade can be put to a throat if a hand does not move fast enough.

“That’s our business, we don’t know if what you’re saying is simply words to help you escape prosecution!” the first guard was adamant on holding the three here. Duty, fear and confusion had tied themselves into a knot he did not know how to cut.

However, a female wail that ripped through the night echoed not too far from the group. The sound had in it the thin tearing edge of finality. More were dying, and the guards were doing their best to stop the few people who can stop this murderer.