Deus Necros

“What are we looking at?” Damra asked as he noticed Ludwig’s finger was on a point of the map where a river run down from the mountain and to the outside of the ward perimeter.

Ludwig kept his fingertip pressed to the parchment, pinning the idea in place the way you pinned a knife through a problem so it couldn’t wriggle away.

Around the war table, bodies leaned closer, ogres casting long shadows over inked lines, lizardmen blinking slowly in the heat, and a few goblins perched at the edge like they were afraid the map itself might bite.

“Breach point, pretty big one, also a good place for Lizardmen to go into for assistance. Lizardmen are stronger near bodies of water,” he looked at Damra, “Not to mention, even the enemy needs to drink, do they not?”

He didn’t say it like a clever plan. He said it like a physical fact, like gravity. The river was a mouth the mountain couldn’t close, and mouths were where you put poison.

Ludwig’s gaze flicked to Akro without lingering too long, just enough to mark the implication: you want leverage, you use the people built for water where water mattered.

“So, you want to cut off their supply?”

Damra’s brow knotted as he followed the river line with his eyes, imagining a thousand red bodies moving through the dark like a tide. Ludwig could see Damra’s mind reaching for the blunt solution, deny the enemy the resource, force them to choke. It was a clean strategy. It was also too slow.

“No, we won’t be able to do that in time, but,” he looked at Akro and smiled, “We can poison it. the orcs that don’t know will drink poisoned water, weakening them.”

Ludwig’s smile wasn’t friendly. It was the kind you gave when you found a crack in armor. Poison wasn’t glory, but glory didn’t stop a spear from going through your throat.

“We don’t have poison that potent.”

One of the ogres muttered it like an objection, as if the idea of poison was already distasteful and the lack of potency was a blessing.

“I can show you how to do it, it’s very simple,” Kaiser spoke from Ludwig’s crystal.

The crystal’s voice carried that calm, clinical confidence only someone detached from morality could manage.

“We need something more potent than what you used last time,” Ludwig said.

He pictured the lizardmen camp earlier, the “shitty day” plan, the controlled sickness meant to subdue without erasing.

That had been clever then. This was different now. A thousand red orcs didn’t need diarrhea to become dangerous; they were already dangerous.

They needed to be slowed, dulled, weakened, turned from a hammer into something you could actually block.

“If it’s about potency, then rest assured, the hard part was making one that didn’t kill. Killing is easy after all.”

The words landed flat, like Kaiser was commenting on weather. Ludwig could practically hear the smile he wasn’t showing.

Ludwig could only shake his head, after all, who other than a Lich could say such things.

“Good, all the lizardmen need to handle this position, the rest we’ll use ambush and guerrilla warfare tactics.”

He moved his finger along the map as he spoke, tracing routes where fast bodies could strike and vanish, where elevation and tree cover could hide movement, where the ward line could be used like a shield rather than a boundary. He didn’t assign tasks like favors. He assigned them like necessities.

“What does that mean?” Damra asked.

Damra wasn’t stupid. He just wasn’t raised on Ludwig’s vocabulary. The Safe Lands had taught ogres to think in cycles, not in doctrine.

“Hit and run,” Ludwig explained.

He kept it simple. No jargon. No theatrics. If the plan needed a lecture to understand, it would fail the moment the first spear flew.

“To weaken them?” Damra asked.

Damra’s eyes were already on the ward perimeter, on the tree line, on the places where a large force would press and press until wood became splinters. He wasn’t thinking about heroics. He was thinking about how long a wall lasted when an army decided it was time for it to stop existing.

“Yes, that’s our only way to soften the impact upon the walls of the mountain. I’ll personally head out and start wreaking havoc if need be. But I’ll need fast and agile members.”

Ludwig’s voice stayed level, but his body betrayed him slightly, shoulders tightening, fingers flexing once as if the orc muscles wanted action right now. He didn’t like waiting. He didn’t like being cornered. He liked problems you could solve with direct violence. This wasn’t that. This was a war where timing mattered more than rage.

“We can help,” Dedal said.

Dedal stepped forward with that blunt eagerness Ludwig had begun to recognize. Grief still sat in him like a stone, but it didn’t slow him; it made him sharper. A man who had just lost a brother wasn’t interested in speeches anymore. He wanted something to hit.

“I trust you would, now for protection and defense. We can’t allow the enemy to progress freely. The ward is our biggest worry, I’ll have to modify it first before we start.” He said as he pointed at another place on the map, “This is the center of the ward, anyone knows how to get there?” Ludwig pointed at the peak of the mountain.

The moment he said “peak,” the mood shifted. It wasn’t fear exactly, more like the collective memory of what lived up there. The laughter. The eyes in the fog. The way corpses turned their heads. Even the bonfire seemed smaller compared to what the mountain held beyond the blue light.

“That place is packed full of soothsayers.” Damra said.

Damra didn’t embellish it. He didn’t need to. Everyone who had lived here long enough knew what that meant.

“I guessed as much, but we have to get there, fast, we have a few hours to do this before we start waging war,” Ludwig added.

He tapped the map once, hard enough to make the parchment flutter, as if the gesture could force time to slow down. A few hours. Not a day. Not a week. A few hours to take control of the ward’s heart, to turn it from a passive defense into something that could bite back.

Just then, something echoed from inside Ludwig’s stomach. A gurgling sound of hunger.

The sound was obscene in a war council. A reminder that this orc body had needs Ludwig’s undead self had forgotten existed. It wasn’t just discomfort; it was a tug, a dull irritation that made everything feel slightly sharper at the edges. Ludwig’s jaw clenched on instinct, annoyed at himself for being betrayed by biology.

“Have you had anything to eat yet?” Damra smiled.

The smile wasn’t mocking. It was the smile of a man who’d seen warriors make stupid mistakes because they thought they were above basic needs.

“I guess not, I can’t fully control this body’s senses.” Ludwig sighed.

He hated admitting it. Control mattered. Ludwig’s entire existence was built on controlling what should have killed him. Hunger felt like weakness, even if it was just physics.

“And when was the last time you rested?” Damra asked.

Damra’s tone turned more serious, the kind that didn’t allow a joke to sit in the air. He wasn’t asking out of kindness. He was asking because exhausted leaders got their people killed.

“Rested?”

“Yes, sleep.”

Damra pointed at Ludwig like the answer should be obvious. A living body needed sleep the way fire needed oxygen. Ludwig had been moving like he could ignore that rule. The orc body didn’t care about his habits.

“Haven’t slept yet since I got here.”

The admission made a couple of ogres exchange looks. Even the goblins looked impressed in that nervous way they got around dangerous people.

“Then you need to rest.”

Damra didn’t phrase it as a suggestion. It was an order wrapped in practicality.

“I can’t, we don’t have time.” Ludwig said.

Ludwig’s eyes flicked back to the map, to the ward center, to the river breach, to the imagined march of red bodies approaching through night. His mind wanted to keep moving because stopping felt like surrender.

“I don’t know what you were before you became an orc, but trust me, an orc on no sleep is worse than a goblin without arms. And we don’t want you to get cranky right now.”

Damra’s bluntness actually helped. Ludwig could picture it too well: fatigue turning into irritation, irritation turning into bad calls, Wrath’s voice using exhaustion as an open door. He didn’t like being compared to anything “cranky,” but he liked the implication even less, that he might lose control at the exact moment control mattered most.

“He is right Ludwig. Even I feel the grasp of sleep trying to drag me into its embrace. We need to rest.”

Gale’s agreement carried more weight than Damra’s teasing. Gale didn’t complain. Gale didn’t make excuses. If Gale said sleep was clawing at him, then it was serious. Ludwig felt the edge of drowsiness in his own skull too, like a pressure behind the eyes, a slight delay in thought that he’d been ignoring because it was inconvenient.

“But there is so much to do.”

The words came out sharper than he meant. Not anger, frustration. Ludwig could feel the orc body’s fatigue like sand in joints. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like being slowed by something as petty as sleep.

“The Orcs won’t arrive anytime soon, you have a day, just rest for a few hours before. And have some meat while you’re at it, your muscles feel like they’re deflating.”

Damra’s eyes flicked over Ludwig’s arms and shoulders with the blunt assessment of someone who understood bodies. Ludwig didn’t see “deflating,” but he felt the difference now that it had been named, a slight heaviness, a dull ache that wasn’t injury, just depletion. Living meat needed fuel.

He hated it. He accepted it anyway. There was a difference between pride and discipline. Pride refused rest. Discipline rested so it could kill properly later.

“Fine, one hour, wake me up in one hour,” Ludwig looked around.

He made the demand like a contract. Not “I’ll try to rest.” One hour. That was a manageable concession. Anything longer and he’d feel like he was abandoning the plan.

“There is a hut over there, with its doors open, that’s my home, go in, there is food on the table, eat feast up, and rest. We’ll handle the details from now on, sir,” he turned to the orc that came with Ludwig, “You do the same too.”

Damra pointed without ceremony. The hut was close enough to the bonfire that Ludwig could still see the light on its doorway, still hear the settlement’s low murmurs. Close enough that resting wouldn’t feel like running away. The smell of cooked meat drifted from that direction immediately once Ludwig paid attention, rich, greasy, almost painfully tempting.

Ludwig swallowed once, annoyed at his own body for reacting, then nodded as if accepting a weapon rather than a bed. Rest now, plan after, fight at dawn. One hour. Then the mountain would get its war.