Deus Necros

“So, tell me, sir Ludwig,” the blacksmith said, “What can I do for you?” he asked.

Andre’s workshop had its own climate. Heat breathed from the forge in waves, and the air carried soot, oil, and the faint metallic tang that settled at the back of the throat. Every surface looked used, not dirty, used, marked by hands that did the same motions a thousand times until the motions became instinct.

Ludwig grabbed a small smith’s hammer that was placed on one of the tables. “Teach me.” He said.

The hammer was simple, scarred at the head, handle worn smooth where palms had polished it over years. Ludwig picked it up like a man picking up a tool he intended to own, not borrow. The single word made a few nearby workers glance over, then look away quickly as if not wanting to be caught listening.

“I beg your pardon?” Andre asked.

“I didn’t stutter, teach me. Metallurgy.”

Andre stared at the hammer in Ludwig’s hand as though the nobleman had picked up a sacred relic.

The stare wasn’t reverence. It was disbelief. Nobles came here to demand weapons. They came to complain about delays. They came to throw coin at problems and call it authority. None of them asked for the craft itself. Andre’s eyes flicked from Ludwig’s fingers to the tool and back again, measuring whether this was a joke.

“Metallurgy?” he repeated slowly. “You’re holding the wrong end of it, for a start.”

Ludwig glanced down. He was, in fact, gripping the head instead of the handle. He adjusted without comment.

The correction was smooth, no embarrassment, no apology, just a change made and moved past. Ludwig had been wrong. Wrongness didn’t offend him.

“I want to understand it,” Ludwig said. “Not just how to swing the hammer. I want to know why iron bends before it breaks. Why some blades shatter in winter. Why yours do not. I have a basic understanding but it’s not enough.”

He kept his voice level. This wasn’t curiosity for amusement. It was a requirement. Ludwig didn’t care about looking foolish in front of apprentices if the result was knowledge that let him wield Noctivex. Pride was a luxury and he’d learned too early what luxury cost.

Andre’s brow twitched.

“That,” he said carefully, “is not something you learn in an afternoon.”

“I am not asking for an afternoon.”

The forge crackled behind them. A bar of iron glowed dull orange in the coals.

Andre wiped his hands on his apron. “You’re a nobleman. You want books. Diagrams. Fancy words.”

“I want truth,” Ludwig replied. “And you have it.”

Andre let out a short breath that might have been a laugh.

“Truth?” he muttered. “Truth is sweat. Truth is burning your fingers because you thought the color looked right. Truth is ruining ten billets before one welds clean.”

He stepped closer and took the hammer gently but firmly from Ludwig’s hand.

It wasn’t disrespect. It was instruction, the kind that began before the lesson was even announced.

“Metallurgy,” Andre continued, “is knowing what’s happening inside the metal when it’s in the fire. Smithing is convincing it to behave anyway.”

Ludwig folded his hands behind his back. “Then show me what happens inside.”

Andre studied him for a long moment.

The pause wasn’t dramatic. It was evaluation. Andre looked at Ludwig like he looked at raw steel, trying to decide if the material would hold under heat or crack the first time it was stressed.

“You ever ruined something expensive, sir Ludwig?”

Ludwig hesitated. “I have made… some financial errors.”

Andre snorted. “Metal doesn’t forgive financial errors.”

He walked to the forge and pulled the glowing bar from the coals.

The iron hissed softly as it left the heat, the orange brightening for a moment in open air, then dulling as the temperature began to drop. Andre held it with tongs like it was nothing, but Ludwig watched the way he watched a spell: controlled, exact, with the certainty of a man who understood invisible forces.

“First lesson,” he said. “Watch the color. Tell me when it’s ready.”

“For what?”

“For anything.”

Ludwig squinted at the iron. “It is… orange.”

Andre raised an eyebrow.

“Orange,” he repeated. “That’s what you see.”

“What do you see?” Ludwig asked.

“I see grain loosening. Carbon waking up. A window that’ll close in about thirty heartbeats.”

He plunged the bar back into the fire.

The metal disappeared into coals that swallowed it like a mouth. The glow intensified again, and the forge’s light painted Andre’s arms in warm flicker. Ludwig heard the bellows breathe, heard the small sound of scale popping as heat did its work.

“You want metallurgy? You’ll learn heat. Structure. Carbon. Why steel is stubborn and iron is kind. You’ll learn why a blade can be hard at the edge and soft at the spine.”

He turned back to Ludwig.

“And you’ll start by sweeping the floor.”

Ludwig blinked. “Sweeping?”

“Yes. You’ll learn what filings look like. How different steels spark. You’ll learn to recognize them by sight before I teach you to name them.”

A beat passed.

Ludwig slowly removed his regalia’s coat.

The fabric came off his shoulders without ceremony. He set it aside like it was armor he no longer needed in this room. If Andre wanted to strip him of status, then status would be stripped. Ludwig didn’t come here to be treated like a lord. He came here to be taught.

“Very well,” he said. “Where is the broom?”

Andre’s mouth twitched. Satisfied.

“By the door,” he said. “And mind you don’t mistake it for metallurgy. This is just the first step.”

Ludwig didn’t hesitate to grab the broom.

For a noble, and for someone who was a guest of the emperor himself. To be asked to pick up a broom and sweep the floors was nothing short of asking one’s head to be chopped. Yet Ludwig’s hand closed around the handle and lifted it without complaint. Pride was worthless here. Pride didn’t shape steel. Pride didn’t raise stats. Pride didn’t unlock Noctivex.