Deus Necros

The world bathed in red.

That was how many people of the Drak Dukedom will be describing this day. Not because they understood what happened, but because they could not explain it any other way. The light shifted wrong, too fast, as if evening had been dragged over the city by a bleeding hand. Streets, roofs, even the faces peeking from cracked windows were washed in a dark crimson tint that made everything look guilty.

It was suddenly evening, then the whole world was covered in the redness of blood. And after that, it felt like Armageddon. As the grounds of the city in its entirety shuddered and shook. Earthquake? Seismic movement? Or an explosion. Many would theorize, but few would have the right answer.

The right answer was buried under the duke’s villa, under the crater that used to be floors, ceilings, corridors, and all the pointless wealth nailed to them. Ludwig’s mace had come down where Gale pointed, and the building had answered by failing completely. The impact did not negotiate with stonework or architecture. It tore through whatever lay in the path of force and left a gouged absence where rooms had been, as if the villa had been scooped out rather than shattered.

The villa of the duke was obliterated, or at least the section that Ludwig’s mace pointed and came down toward.

Every room, floor, ceiling, statue, decoration, or anything that stood in its way, including the few puppets that were moving to hunt them down, was all gone and destroyed.

The dust did not rise politely. It boiled up, thick with powdered stone and splintered wood. Bits of metal rang as they skittered down rubble, and the remains of those obedient husks mixed into the debris without ceremony. Ludwig did not slow to examine the mess. He was already reading what mattered through it: the path his blow had forced open, and the target it exposed.

From where Ludwig stood, a crater-like destruction revealed the faraway room where the creature with many hands, or the Duke, was standing, his eyes, all six of them, wider than humanly possible, as the cube in his hand was sputtering mana from exertion.

The cube trembled like a strained muscle. It leaked mana in uneven pulses, not controlled output but sputters, as if it had been forced to swallow too much and was now choking it back out. The duke’s grafted hands clamped around it with the reflex of panic, and Ludwig immediately understood why the duke still stood. He had not endured that swing. He had thrown it away, displaced the worst of it somewhere else.

The powerful swing made Ludwig’s horns shrink as it used a great deal of his Aura, but not exhaust them yet.

The crystalline horns on Ludwig’s head dulled and pulled back, their edges less pronounced. He registered the drain the way he registered a spent resource, with irritation rather than fatigue. Time mattered more than comfort here.

Ludwig moved forward, a step at a time, with the Knight King in tow.

Gale’s armored bulk followed through the rubble, shield steady, footsteps heavy enough to grind shattered stone into grit. Ludwig advanced without hurry and without hesitation, stepping over broken beams and fractured floor edges like they were nothing but uneven ground. The closer he got, the clearer it became that the cube’s displacement was slipping. Its vibration wasn’t consistent anymore. It was starting to fail under pressure.

The creature had somehow managed to block. No, intercept and transfer the Aura that Ludwig had let loose towards him. He used the Cube’s power to send that aura to a different dimension or direction. It didn’t matter, though, since the closer Ludwig got, the clearer it appeared to him what happened.

The cube had paid for that save. Ludwig could see it in the duke’s hands and hear it in the cube’s strained hum, like an instrument being forced out of tune.

The Duke’s cube was no longer functioning properly; perhaps the massive amount of aura it had to displace made it lose function, or at least buy them enough time. Just as the two arrived at the room, they were kicked out of it.

The Duke’s hands rose. And his mouth began moving.

The air in the room tightened as if reality itself was bracing. The duke’s voice came out layered, multiple tongues overlapping in the same breath, not meant to be understood, only meant to force an effect. His many hands that lifted had magic that took shape in each palm with practiced cruelty.

“DIE!” was the only word that he spoke that Ludwig understood as he hurled the spells forward.

A barrage surged toward Ludwig and Gale, lightning and fire and cutting pressure, stone and force compressed into projectiles. It was not refined. It was desperation trying to turn into annihilation.

“Dark Mirror,” Ludwig’s response was lackluster in terms of domination. But that was what made the Duke’s blood curdle.

After all, he was being looked at as if he were insignificant.

He didn’t need to prove to the Duke or even show him that he was worth worrying about. He did not posture.

The spell name left his mouth like a selection, and a flat sheet of black manifested in front of him, swallowing the incoming barrage the moment it touched. The duke’s spells vanished without impact or spectacle, removed as neatly as if Ludwig had erased them from existence.

Black magic, another use, a second use after summoning Gale. If anyone were to come and investigate the Villa, Ludwig would have many things to answer. But for now, he didn’t care about such things; he was too short on time.

The magic, lightning, fire, wind, earth, and many more all shot out in projectiles that would have eradicated entire platoons of soldiers in a second. But the moment they came in contact with Ludwig’s Dark Mirror, they all simply disappeared inside it.

“You’re not the only one who can displace things,” Ludwig said as he pointed with his hand, “Release.”

The duke’s eyes flicked, each searching for the angle of return, trying to anticipate where Ludwig would send the stored violence. He had a heartbeat of false safety because the mirror wasn’t in front of Ludwig anymore.

The duke didn’t see it, didn’t know what he was facing yet. He had yet to realize what sort and type of Magic Ludwig was using; he couldn’t understand it from the words alone, and his expression could only sour the longer the moment lasted without seeing the effect of Ludwig’s ’Release’.

The explosion of magic that blasted the Duke’s back. The return hit him like a coordinated execution. Fire scorched. Lightning crawled through grafted flesh. Pressure cut and shoved. Stone and raw impact slammed him forward. His body jerked, then flew, robes tearing, hands scrambling to keep hold of the cube even as the cube sputtered harder from the shock.

He could only cry out as his body was flung.

And where it landed? No, he didn’t have the luxury of landing on the ground, as he was intercepted by Ludwig’s left arm.

A grabbing hand locked onto the Duke’s neck, pinning him in the air as his body flailed.

“Now you can’t use that trick anymore.”