Deus Necros

“Was that you? Back at the Villa?” the guard at the gate asked Ludwig. Though he had a feeling that he didn’t even need to hear the answer.

The man stood under the portal frame with that stiff posture imperial gate soldiers all seemed to share, half discipline and half fear of anything that might happen outside the boundaries of their authority.

The cold here had a way of biting into metal, making the air smell faintly of iron and warding residue. Behind Ludwig, the distant city still carried the aftertaste of panic and movement, the kind that followed a toppled house of power. The guard’s eyes lingered on Ludwig’s clothes, his hands, his lack of visible injuries, as if he was trying to reconcile the shaking they all felt with the calm figure standing in front of him.

“And what if it was?” Ludwig asked.

He didn’t offer an explanation. He didn’t deny. He just let the question hang where it belonged, between certainty and accusation.

“You killed him?”

The guard’s voice dropped slightly as if saying it too loudly might invite whatever had happened back there to crawl up the road and bite the gatehouse next.

“And what if that was the case?”

Ludwig’s reply stayed flat, almost bored, and that calmness made the guard’s suspicion look louder than it was. Ludwig wasn’t posturing. He was keeping the conversation in a narrow lane where he controlled the speed.

“What about the ghost? The one that spoke to him.” The guard’s jaw tightened on the word ghost. It wasn’t curiosity. It was superstition mixed with genuine concern.

Gate soldiers heard too many rumors and saw enough strange travelers that they learned to take “ghost” seriously, even when they pretended they didn’t.

“Nothing but lies to make people fear. He was demented, Demon Worshipper. I left him there, but I don’t know if he’ll survive the mob of people. You should send a force to suppress the looting first and stop anyone from taking something they shouldn’t.”

Ludwig didn’t sugarcoat it. He gave the guard a clean set of priorities. Looting would turn that crater into a feeding frenzy, and feeding frenzies always created accidents, bodies, and inconvenient witnesses.

He didn’t say why taking the wrong thing mattered, because explaining valuables to gate soldiers was how valuables vanished. He simply framed it as imperial order and public safety, which the man could understand without being trusted.

“Demonic rituals are nasty business, sure, I’ll send word for the imperial forces. They’ll handle the matter. Where to, now?” The guard asked.

The guard accepted the explanation with visible relief, as if “demon worshipper” fit neatly into his worldview.

He already wanted a villain he could name, and Ludwig handed him one. His hand hovered near the gate controls, waiting for Ludwig’s next destination, practical again now that the moral discomfort had been placed somewhere else.

Ludwig looked at the faraway icy peaks. He wanted to go and check on the situation at Solania, especially with the hordes of enemies there; the Dark Continent bled too many monsters there. But he had bigger fish to fry.

“No, I’ll head back to the capital, I need to report this mission,” Ludwig said.

“As you wish,” the guard immediately activated the gate for Ludwig.

The portal’s wards woke with a low hum that vibrated through the stone base, the air around the frame shifting like a curtain being drawn aside.

The guard’s movements were quick, almost eager, as if he wanted Ludwig gone before the conversation could turn into something else.

“You’re not asking for payment?” Ludwig asked. Though he was able to take the teleport directly from the capital for free since he was escorted by a royal carriage, here he was a nobody.

“There is no need to receive payment from someone who rid the people of evil. Please be on your way,” the guard said.

Ludwig nodded and walked through the gate.

He didn’t correct the man’s framing. Let them call it, rid the people of evil. That was easier than explaining graft, cubes, dungeons, and divine apparatus.

Ludwig stepped forward and let the displacement take him, the familiar sensation of the world grabbing his body and moving it like a piece on a board. Once his vision returned to normal, he was back at the imperial capital of Lufondal.

The air here felt warmer immediately, heavier with civilization, perfumes, smoke, cooking oils, and the faint metallic tang of crowded guards and polished armor.

The gate platform was clean. Too clean. The kind of cleanliness that only existed when people were paid to scrub blood before it became a story.

The carriage that brought him here was still in the same spot.

The coachman’s eyes widened, then narrowed, stuck between disbelief and irritation. The man had been paid to wait, but not to watch a noble vanish into another dukedom and return before the horses had even cooled. The frown deepened as if the coachman suspected Ludwig was either toying with him or about to hand him a second trip with worse consequences.

“Sir, did you forget something?” the coachman asked.

“No, I’ve completed my task. Take me back to the palace,” Ludwig said.

The coachman blinked once, slow, the way men did when they didn’t want to believe the answer they’d been given.

He didn’t argue. He didn’t ask for details. He simply adjusted the reins with stiff hands and set the carriage into motion, because that was his job and because asking questions around the imperial family usually ended badly.

The carriage rolled through the capital streets with the smoothness that only rich cities could afford. Ludwig sat inside without relaxing, listening to the city’s sounds through the walls: distant chatter, the clop of other horses, guards barking routine commands.

Some time later, Ludwig arrived at the gates of the massive palace. He walked out of the palace gates and began moving toward the main gates of the palace.

The palace loomed the way it always did, an architectural reminder that power here was meant to be seen.

Guards recognized him immediately, not by affection, but by the memory of his earlier presence and the trouble it had brought with it.

Ludwig walked past them without stopping, at the same controlled pace as always. Wondering how he’ll announce his mission as complete to the emperor was far more important than what mere guards were thinking.