Deus Necros

Ludwig grunted as his eyes opened, the sound low and rough as if dragged up from a chest that remembered stone. The velvet carpet cradled his cheek with a softness that felt almost mocking after the feeling of bone being crushed in a fist. Threads of red and black blurred against his vision until they steadied into pattern. He breathed once and tasted dust and oil and the faint ghost of incense that clung to the chamber walls. Groaning, he pushed up on one palm, then the other, and rose to a sit. The bed waited at his back, familiar now in a way he did not like, and he let his weight sink to the edge of it. He turned his head to the right.

The Knight King stood where he had stood when Ludwig last woke, still as a statue and as present as a shadow that knows its place. The helm did not tilt. The pale blue within the visor did not flicker. Only the silence between them held the shape of an unasked question.

It settled in Ludwig with the steadiness of a stone falling through water. He had died. The admission did not surprise him. The second truth did. He had died twice, in the same breath, body and essence torn apart so quickly that there had not been an instant to fight back, not even an instinct left over to dress up the failure as battle. It had not been a fight. It had been the application of power. Pure. Final. Uninterested in contest.

“No wonder Necros told me not to fight,” Ludwig said to himself, and the breath rode the words out as a sigh he could not keep.

“What is wrong,” the Knight King asked. The voice came through the helm with the calm of a blade resting in a scabbard. It did not push. It did not pry.

Ludwig did not open his mouth. He set the answer in thought and sent it across. He had done enough speaking for a day already. “You were not there, so you will not remember.”

He felt the Knight King listen. The room did not change and yet felt different for it.

“I met the Lustful Death,” Ludwig continued, the memory an iron rung under his hands. “As I had assumed, it was the queen. She has realized we are a threat, but not enough to step fully into the open. The moment I said aloud that she was the same kind of thing as the Wrathful Death to the Sultan, she tore through the palace. She did not posture. She did not warn. She simply tore. Every guard. Every servant. The king. The prince. Everyone in reach. Less time than a blink.” The words did not hurry. They were set down one by one.

“She is that powerful,” the Knight King asked. No fear lived in the question. Only the measurement of a field before battle.

“I guess so,” Ludwig answered. “We are very lucky that the Wrathful Death was insane. If he had not been broken inside, if he had not repeated himself like a machine that could not stop, I do not think I would have lasted the first year. Only now do I understand why the Seven Usurpers, well six now, are still alive. These ones are hella strong.” He stood, the complaint leaving his voice as he pushed the purple dome outward with a thought. The air of the palace came back in, guarded and perfumed and watched by the walls. Footsteps tapped down the corridor with the precise caution of a servant trained to be heard only when he should.

“What are you planning to do now,” the Knight King asked.

“Definitely not instigate her,” Ludwig said. “She does not feel hostile if you do not prod the wrong places. She feels curious. Playful with knives. I need to investigate. Necros does not waste requests. He would not set me in enemy territory to sit. He knows something. I need to figure out what it is.”

The knock came, light against wood, respectful without being timid. Ludwig crossed to the door and laid his hand on the latch.

The day rolled out again, the same stones and the same faces laid in the same order, and Ludwig walked it as a man walks a familiar road with new shoes. The cadence of voices matched the memory. The questions came as they had, the silences wore the same length. He kept the quick answers locked behind his teeth. He let the scene breathe where it had breathed before.

“Not even my wife,” the Sultan asked, the same tired wonder in the question.

“No,” Ludwig said. “As a matter of fact, she is the least likely to be a demon in the palace.”

“That is strange,” the Sultan said, frowning in the same place where the crease had lived on the previous pass.

“Why is it strange,” Ludwig replied with the tone of a man asking for a missing piece on purpose.

“I thought you, among anyone here, would have seen something different about my wife,” the Sultan said. The sentence hung there between them like a curtain someone might or might not choose to pull aside.

Ludwig let his tongue rest behind his teeth. He could feel the edge of the word that would cut the entire room open. He kept his palm off it. If he confirmed the king’s suspicion at the wrong angle, if he gave the truth a shape that pricked pride, the queen might step into her other self again and tear the palace apart. He had already watched that answer. He did not need it twice.

“I suppose you would think your wife is different,” Ludwig said instead, a step taken onto firmer stone.

[You are in a Hostile Environment]

The warning lit the back of his eyes. He did not blink. He kept his breath the size it had been. A thought crossed his mind however, unlike before this one was only Hostile not Deadly. So it was at least a step in the proper direction, she is wary but not sure. Curios but not lethal for now that is. Ludwig needed to keep his words in order.

“Would that not be because she was afflicted by the same thing that happened to you,” Ludwig asked, turning the question with bare hands. “If you were hunted by something invisible, the traces might pull at others who stand near you.”

The king’s face softened a fraction. Thought moved behind his eyes. “Oh. You might be right. I had my doubts that she was acting strange. Perhaps one of those demons had a hand in it. Care to handle that matter for me then. Check if she is sick or harmed by a demon.”

[You are no longer in a Hostile Environment]

“I will see what I can do,” Ludwig said. “I am not a demonology expert, so I cannot promise anything.” He let the humility sit on top of the ability where it belonged.

“I see,” the Sultan said. “Do not worry. Keep your eyes on her highness in case she is endangered. Right now I need to solve this problem with the empire.”

“If you did not instigate the attacks,” the prince said, his voice careful where it had not needed to be careful in his own city, “nor did anyone from the palace, how did this come to happen.” Alex did not look away from the king while he asked, as if the manner of asking were a form of respect.

“We truly do not know,” the chancellor said. The old man’s hands wanted paper. “I will have everyone under me investigate and come to the bottom of this.”

“It is demons,” Ludwig said. He did not change the tone. He simply set the word down so that it could not be stepped over.

“How can you be so certain,” Tull asked. He did not couch it as challenge. He asked to place his feet where Ludwig had already placed his.

Ludwig drew a small vial from his clothing, careful with it as a man is careful with a friend’s breath. Inside, a dark pill rested and pulsed with a soft, steady rhythm. The beat thudded against the glass like a finger tapping on a drum. “I fought a few,” he said. “They were nurturing this thing with a profane ritual. Dark work. Patient work. You have a strong demon hiding in your country that is acting behind your back. It almost killed you. Or worse. It could have turned you into theirs.”

“Can you locate this demon,” the King asked. There was no plea in it. A ruler was measuring costs.

“I cannot say that I can do that,” Ludwig began, and the sentence died as the air in front of him rippled with letters.

[You have reached a decent understanding of the situation that happened in the Sand Kingdom.]

A demonic entity has infiltrated the Sand Kingdom and is spreading its influence throughout the capital. It has destabilized the country and is about to create the kind of chaos in which demons thrive and prosper.

Necros is not interested in the deaths of mortals in war nor the triumph of demons, Necros is eternally neutral, but the demonic entity you are pursuing should not be allowed to fester on a Usurper’s territory without their knowledge.

Find out why such a demonic entity is being allowed to roam free. Destroy it, along with the Usurper that is supporting it if possible.

Rewards: Unknown.

You have received [Shard of Darkness] as a reward for completing the first part of [Hidden in Plain Sight].

[Existence Quest II is intertwined with the second part of Hidden in Plain Sight.]

“On second thought,” Ludwig said, letting the last flicker of light fade from his eyes before he looked up at the king, “let me handle it.” He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The words carried their own weight, and the room learned it.