Deus Necros

Of course, he sounded pleased.

Kaiser treated horror like an art form and expected applause. Even in the middle of blood and panic, he still found room to be offended on behalf of his lineage. Ludwig almost hated how useful that personality was. Almost.

That gave Ludwig the leverage he needed to tip this battle completely.

The Red King’s wall of meat wasn’t infinite. His feeding was fast, but it still required bodies reaching his mouth alive. If Ludwig could strip those bodies away, turn them into corpses before they became fuel, then the Red King would be forced to stop growing and start fighting. Ludwig didn’t need a miracle. He needed a shift. Kaiser had delivered it.

“RUN THEM THROUGH!” Ludwig howled as he pushed forward with as much power as he could, culling bodies, cutting heads, and ravenously shredding enemies apart.

He didn’t wait for agreement. His voice became the spear that drove his side into motion. Allied orcs surged, emboldened by the sight of reinforcement that looked like nightmare given legs. Ogres tightened formation. Gale adjusted instantly, carving a lane that aimed for the Red King again now that the pressure on the flanks had a chance of breaking.

Ludwig forced his body into speed, ignoring the ache in muscles that hadn’t been built for endless sprinting, letting Durandal do what it did best: turn obstacles into absence.

The impact of the Undead Army was immediate and visible.

They hit the red mass like a crashing tide. Skeletons didn’t hesitate. They didn’t recoil when clubs smashed ribs apart. They didn’t pause when a skull cracked and rolled. If one fell, three climbed over it. If a limb snapped, the body still crawled forward with teeth and hands. The sound of the collision was like a thousand dry branches breaking at once, layered under the wet chorus of living bodies being opened.

They were far weaker, and lighter than the red orcs as individuals. But the Undead were not meant to fight one against one. They were legion.

They didn’t duel. They swarmed. A red orc could smash one skeleton into splinters with a single swing, and it wouldn’t matter because the red orc’s arms would then be grabbed by three more, legs hooked by another, ankles gnawed by something that used to have a jaw. The undead didn’t win by strength. They won by refusing to stop.

They would dive into the fray, unwilling and unwanting to succumb to fear nor fatigue, they would cut, stab and tear and move on, never stopping. They didn’t challenge to duels, they merely injured whoever was in their way.

A skeleton’s blade didn’t need to cleave a spine clean. It only needed to open a tendon. A puncture in a thigh, a slice across a wrist, a jab through a calf, small injuries multiplied into collapse when the same target was touched again and again. The undead fought like a disease: not glorious, not honorable, but devastating because it didn’t care if it looked impressive.

And once the first undead injured the first orc, by the time the tenth undead had dealt his own blow, the orc would already be shredded meat.

The red orcs started to slow, not from fear, but from damage stacking faster than their bodies could compensate. Their swings became sloppy. Their footing turned unsure. Blood loss made their momentum unreliable. The ones that tried to push through were dragged down into piles of bone and blades until they stopped moving.

The Orcs that tried to block the incoming undead were simply swarmed in undead.

It wasn’t a line anymore. It was a crush. Red muscle disappeared under pale bodies, like wolves burying a boar. Hands clamped onto armor. Teeth scraped at exposed skin. Blades stabbed repeatedly into soft gaps. The red orcs’ advantage, size, power, aggression, became less valuable the moment they were denied space to swing.

Pushing and bashing the head of the first dozen undead served nothing but to exhaust them as the rest would pile on an orc, and only leave when it was a breathless corpse.

Their “victories” became traps. Every skeleton they smashed became debris that other skeletons climbed over. Every second spent crushing bone was a second not spent guarding their throat from Durandal, or stopping Gale’s approach, or watching the undead wave flow around them like water finding gaps.

“RISE UNDEAD!” Kaiser’s raised hands from atop his mount showed the world the true terror a lich can bring into battle.

The words weren’t just a command; they were a verdict. Kaiser lifted both hands as if he was blessing the battlefield with cruelty, and dark power rolled outward. It crawled across corpses, seeped into torn flesh, and grabbed at what remained like a hook sinking into meat. The air grew colder in a way that didn’t come from wind, a chill that tasted like old graves and wet stone.

The orcs which were once the enemy, began standing up. This time, wearing the banner of Ludwig Heart.

It happened fast enough to be horrifying. A red orc that had just fallen, eyes still open, mouth half-formed around a snarl, jerked as if yanked by an invisible chain. Bones reset with ugly pops. Fingers clenched. Then it rose, not as red fury, but as obedience. Around it, more did the same, turning the ground itself into a betrayal for the Red King. Every corpse Ludwig and Gale had created became a potential soldier in Kaiser’s hands, flipping death into recruitment.

And in mere minutes, the entire frontline that was protecting the Red King was gone.

Not because the red orcs stopped wanting to protect him, but because they were being erased from existence as a frontline, converted, shredded, dragged down, or repurposed. The wall of bodies that had been buying the Red King time collapsed into chaos, and for the first time since Ludwig had seen him, the Red King’s feeding rhythm faltered.

Forcing the latter to finally stop eating.

The Red King’s jaw paused mid-chew. His eyes, too small for his swollen face now, shifted. He looked down at the thinning supply, at the corpses rising under a different banner, at the swarm that no longer cared about his authority. The indulgent feast posture tightened into something else. A decision forming.

It realized it too. That he could eat no more, and he had to make do with the power he consumed already.