Deus Necros

Ludwig could only stare in surprise. The reaction was the opposite of what his instincts expected: no lowered heads, no grim silence, no heavy respect, the way warriors usually treated the name of a fallen comrade.

Instead, the announcement hit the settlement like a spark tossed into dry hay. Mugs rose higher. Voices grew louder. Laughter thickened. People leaned in to clap shoulders and slam tables, as if death had been a toast rather than a wound.

Where he expected things to change from joy to mourning, everyone became ten times more jubilant. They drank like there was no tomorrow, and they ate as if they had starved forever. Meat juice ran down chins. Grease shone on tusks. Someone started pounding a rhythm on the side of a barrel with the bottom of a mug, and the bonfire’s orange light flickered across faces that looked too relieved to be normal.

Ludwig’s orc stomach responded to the smell with a traitorous twist, bread, roasted fat, ale, things his undead self never had to negotiate with. Here, the body negotiated whether he liked it or not.

“The hell is going on?” Ludwig muttered.

Damra walked toward Ludwig, stepping through the crowd as if the crowd was part of his clothing. He wasn’t rushed. He didn’t need to be.

People made space without being told. He held a drinking horn like a scepter, and the mead inside sloshed thick and golden, foaming at the rim.

Damra stopped close enough that Ludwig could smell the drink before it even touched him, sweet, sharp, and strong enough to make a living man forget his own name.

Damra walked toward Ludwig, handing him his own drinking horn. “I’ve told you, when you get here, you’ll be rewarded with a feast. Enjoy.” He placed the horn right next to Ludwig’s chest, an offer that shouldn’t be refused.

It wasn’t a threat, but it carried the same weight. Refusing in front of everyone would read as an insult. Accepting would read as compliance. Ludwig took it because sometimes politics was as simple as not creating a scene when you still needed answers.

Ludwig grabbed the horn, took a look, and a sniff. This was some powerful mead. He gave it a couple of chugs and handed it back. The drink hit his tongue hot and sweet and almost painfully alive.

It burned down his throat and settled in his gut with a warmth that made him understand why people could drown themselves in this place willingly.

He kept his face neutral anyway. If he let satisfaction show, this crowd would treat him like one of them too quickly.

“I appreciate the hospitality, but I need to know what’s going on, where is this place, no, more like what is this place?” Ludwig asked.

Damra’s grin stayed easy, but his eyes sharpened slightly, as if pleased. Ludwig asked the right question instead of simply eating and forgetting.

“Our respite, our Safe Lands. The place where no wars and no killing can happen. This is where we stay until the cycle begins again, then we celebrate again.”

Ludwig’s gaze drifted across the settlement while Damra spoke. He watched how casually different races stood near each other without hands on weapons. He watched how the bonfire’s light didn’t make anyone tense.

He watched the torches along the perimeter, those cold blue ones, held at careful intervals like fence posts. “No wars and no killing” was a rule you didn’t get by trusting everyone to behave. It was enforced, one way or another.

“So, an endless party?”

“What else can we do?” Damra smiled.

The answer was honest in the way surrender was honest. It wasn’t pride. It was adaptation. If you couldn’t climb, couldn’t escape, couldn’t change the Tower’s script, then you made your cage comfortable enough to call it home.

Ludwig thought for a second. “You know you’re prisoners.”

“Indeed, everyone here does. We cannot go up, we are forever here.”

The bluntness of it made Ludwig’s jaw tighten. People who admitted their chains out loud either had already accepted them… or had been broken enough that denial was wasted effort.

“What happened to those who… want to leave this endless party? I have an inkling to think that a few get tired of this after a while.”

Damra’s smile didn’t fade, but it shifted, less jovial, more practiced. Like he’d answered this before, many times, and every time it ended the same way.

“You’ve seen them, back at the slope of the mountain.”

The effigies. The vine-locked bodies staring in terror. Ludwig’s stomach cooled despite the mead.

“Escapee?”

“Escape? We’re not holding anyone prisoner. If you wish to leave, you’ll be given armor, weapons, and tools to defend yourself. But no one ever makes it past the tree line.”

Ludwig pictured the corridor of silence. The laughter. The vines tightening around corpses like fingers. The way the mountain turned bodies into warnings. “Armor and tools” sounded generous until you remembered what lived beyond the torches. That wasn’t a door. That was a ritual sacrifice with better packaging.

Ludwig thought for a second.

“What if someone does?”

“It would be a great surprise, but… why would they? Give up a life where you can enjoy, to go and be ruled by the tower eternally. This is a good place. The Good Place.”

The capital letters weren’t spoken, but Ludwig heard them anyway. The Good Place. A phrase you repeated often enough that it started sounding like the truth, even when you knew it was just a blanket over a pit.

Ludwig didn’t want to judge, but couldn’t help it.

’This isn’t a life. This is an escapism’s dream.’

It wasn’t contempt. It was recognition. If Ludwig’s death wasn’t reversible, if his mission wasn’t dragging him forward by the throat, he could understand how a prison with meat and music could start looking like salvation.

The thought was simple. But he couldn’t blame them. Why would they want to go down and be ruled by the tower, to be submitted under other climbers’ rules? Fight, bleed, be injured, and die. Instead, they created their own heaven here.

Unfortunately, heaven built inside a dungeon never stayed private. Sooner or later, something knocked.

“Unfortunately,” Ludwig muttered. “This place,” he looked at it, “Won’t be safe for long.”