Deus Necros

Inside the Yellow River Branch, the atmosphere was shaking in excitement from the sudden change. The air itself seemed to shiver, a faint tremor passing through grit and vapor, as if the branch had been holding its breath for centuries and had finally remembered how to exhale. The sludge-laden current pulsed once in a slow, queasy heartbeat, and the banks answered with a dry rasp like teeth.

Redd and Tull had already finished off the incoming demons, and the Prince was looking with complete shock and awe at what just happened. Demon bodies did not so much fall as unravel, coming apart in damp ribbons that the river eagerly lapped up. Redd panted through half-bared fangs, shoulders banded with corded muscle and a sheen of sweat that the yellow wind could not lick away.

Tull stood with his stance still set, the tip of his sword digging a small crescent into the mud because he had not realized yet that he was pressing down. The Prince’s hands hovered uselessly near his sides, fingers twitching, mind scrambling to catch up to a world that kept changing rules in the middle of the sentence.

Ludwig was simply dropped dead, his entire body was turned to that of a dead husk. He lay as if the ground had grown him, limbs at angles that ignored comfort, the hole in his chest a dark, deliberate absence. No rise of ribcage, no hint of breath, no trick of eyelids pretending at life. The aura around him had guttered out like a candle pinched between wet fingers.

His body and skin dried out, resembling a corpse that had long since died.

Without even having battelled to his full potential. He didn’t even showcase his swordsmanship or magic fully and was dropped by mere words. Even though he deafened himself. The words of the Envious Death still rang inside his body and made it hers. It felt like a theft committed with a whisper. The echo of her command clung to the air, an aftertaste of iron and sweet rot. The Prince swallowed and felt the swallow stick halfway, an absurd little detail that made terror feel suddenly, obscenely practical.

The same tone of aura that Ludwig had earlier was now painted fully on Envy. It crawled over her like fresh blood over snow, a red that had weight, a red that made the sand around her darken and sink. Her hair seemed to drink it in, strands shifting shade from purple to a wine-glow, then to the color of arterial spill. The light near her grew strangely heavy, as if brightness itself were tired.

“YOUR HIGHNESS!” Tull howled as he grabbed red by the scruff of the neck like some ragdoll and threw him toward the prince. The shout knifed through the muffled world, clean and soldier-true. His hand closed on the back of Redd’s tunic and hauled with a motion that had saved men on cliffs and at sieges. Redd hit the sand in a tangle of limbs and instinct, rolled twice, and dug claws into the bank to stop himself, grit surging under his nails.

Redd tumbled a couple of times before Tull rushed toward them. The guard’s boots chewed furrows as he ran, the long blade trailing a thin line behind like a plow. A breath later, the line filled with damp and began to sink.

The Envious Death roared out, releasing a shockwave of pure red aura that washed over everyone. The roar did not travel as sound. It arrived as power, as a hand shoved flat against the sternum, as heat that did not warm but insisted. The wave slapped ripples through the river’s skin, and everywhere the ripples touched, the souls below thrashed and fled without moving.

Tull who rushed toward the prince was shocked by it and made to fly and tumble far too close to the river side. His feet left the ground in a parody of a leap, his shoulder hit first, and momentum dragged him three body-lengths toward the sluggish current. Sand jammed into the seam of his pauldron with a gritty squeal. The stink of the rivulet climbed up his nose, sweet and sour and old.

However not even the souls dared approach Tull even with the vitality and ’life’ he had on him. The red aura was making it so that every soul in the river was feeling panic and fear that no mortal should ever understand. Faces formed for a heartbeat under the surface, mouths open in a soundless chorus, then dissolved again as if ashamed of having shapes at all. The current edged away from him in a mean little recoil.

Tull stood up and rushed to the prince and the fallen Redd. He then held a crystal in his hand, “ESCAPE!” he howled. The crystal flashed the pale blue of a winter sky, veins of light racing inside it like lightning searching for ground. For an instant hope had a color and a cut, and it looked like this.

The crystal tore and broke, however, a word, a simple word echoed from Envy’s mouth, “STAY!” Her lips barely parted. The command stepped into the world and the world obeyed.

And the crystal’s energy simply sputtered out. The crystal that was about to let them move to another land was simply nullified. Light stuttered, then died in a guilty blink. The shards dropped between Tull’s fingers and hit the ground without a sound, as if even the sand had decided that noise would be optimistic.

She looked at them with eyes that changed color in rapid succession from pure black to red as blood. “You… must not… leave!” she struggled to utter her words, and slurred them as she walked. Each syllable dragged as if it were heavy. Her steps were the same, neither graceful nor clumsy, but burdened, like someone crossing a floor scattered with knives that only she could see.

“This is bad…” Redd said, as the hairs on his body all stood up. “This is as bad as that Day in Tulmud… that’s Wrath, the same being that came to Tulmud and broke it down completely… this is really, really bad.” His voice had the low, breathless sound of someone speaking around a snarl. He did not look away from her. Animals did not look away from fire.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Tull said as he stood in front of the Prince. He reset his grip, knuckles whitening, blade angled low to guard the body behind him. His jaw worked once, tight and careful, as if he were chewing on a prayer and finding it too tough.

“We can’t fight her…” Alex said. “We need to run, is that the only stone you have.” His eyes tracked the broken crystal pieces like they were the last coins of a kingdom gone to siege. He was pale in a way that made the veins at his temples show.

“Yeah, it’s not effective,” Tull said as he gripped his sword tighter. He did not add that his palms were slick. He did not need to. The hilt creaked anyway.

“Mere flies, mere ants, mere bugs, you dare! DARE!” each of her words literally crumbled the ground around her. It wasn’t as if she was speaking sound, but she spoke power itself. The syllables fell like stones, and where they landed the sand sloughed away in powder, leaving raw clots of darker dirt beneath, the branch trying to hide its own face.

“I don’t think that pointing out that it was Ludwig who did all that would help us… she really is blaming us man…” Redd said. His mouth twisted into something that wanted to be a grin and failed, because humor had found teeth here.

“And you’re being awfully snarky for someone about to die,” Tull said. He did not look back. He kept his blade between the Prince and the world and pretended that made the world a manageable size.

“Die? Who said that?” Redd said. He flexed his fingers and felt the itch of change want to take him further. He kept it at the wrists. He was not sure he would be able to turn it off if he let it climb.

“In case you’re blind, we’re facing what looks like death.”

“No, death hasn’t woken up yet… isn’t that right… Ludwig.” Redd lifted his chin just slightly, eyes narrowing on a point beyond her shoulder, trusting instinct over evidence, which in his experience had a better batting average.

“True,” the words came from right behind the Envious death. They arrived calm, unhurried, utterly at odds with the way the branch was shaking itself to pieces.

She couldn’t turn before her chest was ripped open with a blood colored sword that was taller and wider than herself. The blade slid through her like a vertical dawn, crimson from fuller to edge, the light along it oddly matte, as if it drank shine. Flesh parted with a clean, obscene ease that made the stomach forget its job.