Deus Necros

The name drew no recognition from Titania or Misty, though the veil around Titania shifted faintly as if divine power still trapped beyond it had reacted to the word in a way she could not yet perceive.

Titania looked toward Misty, then back to Ludwig. ”I do not know the specific name. There have been rumors, however. Before my imprisonment, reports reached the Sacrosanctum about a being beyond the northern peaks of Solania. Something moving alongside the malformed armies. The accounts were contradictory, and most were dismissed as frightened exaggerations from scouts who had encountered monsters unfamiliar to them.”

”They were not exaggerating,” Ludwig replied. ”He is the one leading those things. He is another Usurper of Death. The Slothful Death. And the only thing stopping him from moving was Morde’Xander. The Wrathful Death. Now that he’s gone... No need to thank me. We’re in deeper shit.”

”Why does it feel like whenever you touch something the world seems to pay the cost for that infraction...” Titania said.

Ludwig olnly shrugged.

Misty’s grip on the anchor tightened again. ”If the Demon King is being summoned early, that must be what the Divine Patrons are prioritizing. It does not mean they do not care about the other threat. The Demon King is a disaster written into the foundations of this world. His arrival is meant to be opposed by the Hero, but the Hero is not prepared yet. If Clementine and those working with her force the summoning ahead of the ordained time, the people will face something their designated savior is not yet capable of defeating.”

Her face twisted slightly as she said the last portion, clearly remembering the truth of the Hero Titania had found with that young woman. The idea that such a man was still the chosen public weapon against a Demon King did not sit easily with her, but old doctrine was difficult to discard in a single breath.

”The gods of the Order care for the people,” Misty continued. ”They would not knowingly allow Solania to be destroyed merely because another threat falls beyond the wording of the request.”

”Would they not?” Ludwig asked. ”Because from where I am standing, their Saintess was chained beneath their own temple for months, children were cut apart and denied death just around the corner, and it took Necros providing them with a speaking tube before they managed to deliver a message. When they finally did, their concern was very precise.”

Misty flinched, and Titania raised one restrained hand as far as the chain allowed, stopping whatever defense the young nun had been ready to make.

It was Kaiser who spoke next.

”Ludwig is correct,” Kaiser said, his voice polite enough that the accusation sounded worse. ”The Four Divine Patrons do not need to be cruel in the childish sense to be selfish. They have a stake in the Demon King. His premature summoning interferes with their Hero, their doctrine, their authority, and the faith gathered through the story they have chosen to support. If the Demon King rises too soon and kills their designated savior, their loss would be considerable.”

Misty looked toward him. ”You speak as though divine protection is an investment.”

”It often is,” Kaiser replied. ”A noble family does not defend its lands only from tenderness toward farmers. A kingdom does not send soldiers to a border solely because it values every villager personally. Duty, authority, possession, prestige, and survival are tangled things. Why should gods be simpler than men?”

Titania listened without interrupting, her expression becoming more difficult to read with each word.

Kaiser glanced toward Ludwig before continuing. ”As for Sloth, that matter belongs elsewhere. The Usurpers are profanations of Death. They are creatures Necros needs destroyed, not obstacles the Divine Patrons of the Holy Order are obligated to remove. The malformed army may threaten their followers, certainly. Its defeat may even bring their faithful glory and honor if their servants happen to fight it. But those lazy slobs will not spend themselves intervening in a matter that another god has already claimed as his responsibility.”

For a brief moment, the room was silent enough for the cries in the distant cells to return through the walls.

Misty looked horrified, though she could not immediately decide whether she was more disturbed by Kaiser’s words or by the fact that nothing in the divine message disproved them. Titania, on the other hand, did not rebuke him. She looked down at the chains around her wrists, then toward the golden veil that had separated her from the patrons she had served for centuries.

Ludwig let out a humorless breath. ”They ask for help, but won’t offer it. Quite selfish indeed.”

”The reward they offer you is not trivial,” Titania said after a pause.

”No,” Ludwig replied. ”It is fantastic. Believe me, I am going to take it. Half a liter of pure Nephilium could do wonders for me, and I have no intention of pretending I am above getting stronger when the world is preparing to collapse. But a good bribe does not become generosity merely because I benefit from it.”

That earned the faintest shift at the corner of Titania’s mouth. Not a smile, precisely, but a momentary recognition that Ludwig remained exactly as disrespectful as she remembered him.

Misty looked toward Titania anxiously. ”My lady, regardless of their reasons, they have asked you to act. If the seal can be broken, your oath may permit you to oppose Clementine through this order. Their command should stand above hers.”

Titania nodded slowly. ”Yes. It changes the structure of my obligations. If the message is truly delivered under divine accord, then preventing the summoning becomes an explicit duty from the patrons to whom my oath was originally sworn. Clementine may remain protected from direct retaliation until the legal and spiritual structure is clarified, but he can no longer command me into inaction where this objective is concerned.”

Ludwig frowned. ”Meaning you can fight the things he sends at us, tear apart whatever is used to summon the Demon King, and protect anyone she tries to sacrifice, but you cannot simply cave his your bare hands.”

”That is a crude summary,” Titania said.

”Is it inaccurate?”

”No.”

”Then we are going to need a less satisfying plan.”

Redd finally stepped closer to the bed. He had remained quiet through the discussion of gods and priorities, likely because his own interest was fixed on a much more immediate name. ”The Shrike is involved in this,” he said. ”The quest brought us here to find her.”

Titania’s eyes hardened. ”Sister Gallows?”

”You know her?” Ludwig asked.

”I fought her alongside this gentleman next to you,” Titania replied. ”If she serves Clementine then that makes things more ugly. I personally captured her and brought her to the Sacrosanctum for investigation, but something intervened later and allowed her escape. A person we both know.”

”The treacherous fanged apostle.”

”That man’s greed knows no bounds.”

”I wouldn’t call him a man, regardless we need to take her out, I’m surprised that she didn’t get obliterated here, but it’s not easy to kill an immortal being...” Ludwig said. ”Not to mention Redd’s business with her is left unconcluded.”

Redd’s silence confirmed enough.

Titania shifted against her chains, and for once her restrained posture looked less like acceptance and more like a predator testing the edges of a cage. ”Then we are dealing with three immediate tasks. The seal cutting the dead from passage and severing me from my patrons must be destroyed. The summoning of the Demon King must be stopped. Sister Gallows must be located before she warns Clementine that intruders have reached the lower catacombs.”

”Four tasks,” Ludwig added. ”Mot needs to be warned without allowing him to act prematurely. If what I saw happens again, his response is what breaks the sky.”

Titania looked at him more closely. ”You continue to speak of events as though you have watched them occur.”

”something like that...”

”Later,” she said after a measured pause. ”I suspect that explanation will irritate me, and I prefer to reserve that irritation for people I am currently permitted to strike.”

”That is probably wise.”

Misty stepped toward the bed and looked down at the chain restraints. ”How do we free her?”

”As much as I want to simply rip the chains apart with my own hands...we do not break those first,” Ludwig said. ”Not yet. The same source sealing the children’s souls is part of what is isolating Titania. If we try tearing her loose without destroying the origin, the binding may tighten, lash back through her oath, or notify every bastard in the building that their most valuable prisoner is being freed.”

Titania gave him a faintly approving look. ”You have become considerably less reckless.”

”I resent that accusation.”

”It was intended as praise.”

”That makes it worse.”

Misty looked between them in disbelief, then returned her attention to the corridor. ”You expect us to leave her chained while we search for the source?”

”I expect you to remain here with her for a little longer,” Ludwig said. ”The people guarding this door are unconscious, not dead. When they wake, if the room is empty, an alarm starts. If you remain exactly where they believe you should be, we buy time.”

Misty’s expression immediately hardened. ”I am not staying behind while you ascend into the place responsible for this.”

”You are also the only reason anyone who checks this chamber might believe nothing has changed,” Kaiser said. ”The Saintess cannot conceal her own disappearance, and you are her known attendant. If both of you vanish, stealth ceases to be an option before we reach the source.”

Misty looked toward Titania, expecting resistance. Instead, Titania nodded.

”He is right,” Titania said. ”I dislike remaining passive now that I know the truth, but anger does not improve strategy. The first useful act I can take is to remain exactly where Clementine believes he has placed me while Ludwig destroys the foundation of her advantage.”

The anchor’s metal groaned under Misty’s hands, but after a long moment she set it back beside the chair. ”Then I stay.”

Ludwig looked at Titania. ”Once the seal breaks, what happens?”

”If my patrons can reach me again,” Titania replied, and the boredom that had once defined her was now gone entirely, ”then I will learn precisely what my oath permits me to do.”

Misty glanced at the enormous anchor beside her, then toward the ceiling above them. ”And if it permits enough?”

Titania’s gaze settled on the chains around her wrists.

”Then Clementine will discover that three months was not long enough for me to become forgiving. Nor weak.”

Ludwig felt a small smile form despite the circumstances. He turned toward the open doorway, where the unconscious guards remained scattered across the stone.

”Good,” he said. ”That is the first hopeful thing I have heard since arriving in this miserable city.”

Before he left, Titania called his name.

Ludwig turned back.

Her eyes rested on the Soul Letting Lantern at his side, then on his eyes. She could not see what they concealed. None of them could. To her, he was still the strange, dangerous young man she had fought alongside before, carrying strange power that almost bordered the dark magic she abhorred. She had learned to tolerate because he repeatedly pointed it in the right direction. She did not know that Death stood closer to him than ever now, or that the pale young noble beside him was a corpse hiding a lich behind the same veil.

”Ludwig,” Titania said, ”the message from my patrons came through the god you serve.”

”Yes.”

”And Necros is willing to act where the other gods cannot?”

Ludwig placed one hand over the lantern. The black flame within it shifted, quiet but aware.

”I would not mistake him for kind,” Ludwig said. ”But someone trapped souls in corpses under a holy building, and Necros is extremely angry about it. For now, that is good enough for me.”

Titania considered the answer, then gave a slight nod. ”For now, it is good enough for me as well.”

Ludwig left the room first. Redd followed closely, his earlier fury now narrowed toward Sister Gallows and everything below that protected her. Kaiser stepped out last, wearing the face of a noble heir and the silence of something far older and deader beneath it. Behind them, Misty returned to the chair beside Titania’s bed, but she no longer polished the anchor. She rested both hands around its handle and waited.

The moment the door closed, Ludwig headed toward the only passage leading up.

The catacombs had already shown him children without hope, adults turned into material, souls denied the mercy of death, and a Saintess made deaf to her gods. Somewhere above all of it was the spell that made those atrocities possible.

He did not intend to leave it intact for much longer.