Deus Necros

The air changed.

It was not a spell in the normal sense. There was no circle beneath Ludwig’s feet, no mana flooding the chamber, no incantation shaping the world through structured command. The change was quieter than that, but far more offensive to something like Sister Gallows. It pressed outward from Ludwig in a way that made the spinning wards around the floating core stutter for a fraction of a second. The glowing blood lines on the floor pulsed unevenly, as if the ritual itself had felt a stronger law pass too close to it.

Gallows noticed immediately.

Her smile vanished. The chakrams in her hands lowered by a fraction, not from fear, but from disbelief sharp enough to cut through her anger. Her eyes fixed on Ludwig with a kind of hatred that did not belong to the fight itself. It was older. More personal. More wounded.

”Authority...” she whispered.

The word tasted vile coming from her mouth.

Ludwig did not answer.

He only stood there, Durandal still sheathed, Nightbreaker still untouched, Noctivex still asleep, and the lantern at his side burning with its quiet black flame. The declaration had settled over him now, not like Wrath, not like Envy, and not even like the terrible crushing certainty Pride had used against him in the tower. This was narrower. More focused. A statement made true because the power behind it had decided the world could afford to bend.

Gallows’s grip tightened around her chakrams until the metal creaked. ”How?” she asked, and when Ludwig gave her no answer, her voice rose. ”How do you have that?”

Kaiser watched her carefully from beside the core, his expression light but his eyes attentive. Redd, still half-transformed and bleeding from wounds that continued closing across his red fur, looked between Gallows and Ludwig without understanding the depth of what had just changed. To him, Ludwig had only spoken with more confidence than before. To Gallows, who had once carried Necros’s mark and then lost everything that made such a mark meaningful, it was something far worse.

A reminder.

Apostles of Necros had possessed Authority once, but never like this. Theirs had not been a power they wielded freely, not a blade placed in their hands. It had been the authority to die, the right to return through death and try again when the world rejected them. The moment they turned their backs on Necros, that right had been stripped away. The Return by Death had vanished, and the former Apostles, terrified of mortality after tasting its absence, had crawled toward other immortality wherever they could find it.

Ludwig knew some of those stories now.

The Treacherous Fanged Wolf had made his pact with the Gluttonous Death, though he had not shown his face to Ludwig since the summoning of the Wrathful Death nearly six years ago. The Faceless had obtained his persistence through some strange means Ludwig had never cared enough to fully unravel. Kaiser had chosen undeath through lichdom, hiding his existence inside preserved flesh and old schemes. The Scryer had bound herself to the House of Drak. Each one had fled the loss of Necros’s favor by becoming something else, something that could refuse an ordinary end.

Most of them had died anyway.

Gallows stood in front of him now, her regeneration far more absurd than even the others, and yet all she could see was that Ludwig had been given what she had never been allowed to control.

”You can call it?” she asked, her voice shaking with rage now. ”You can command it? At will?”

Ludwig slowly drew Durandal.

The blade left its sheath with a clean, quiet sound that seemed almost gentle compared to the chamber around them. ”You talk too much.”

That struck her harder than the answer would have.

Gallows’s lips peeled back from her teeth. ”Why?” she snarled. ”Why does he favor you? Why does Necros offer you so much while the rest of us were treated like refuse? We bled for him. We died for him. We were thrown away, and you stand here carrying his lantern, his favor, his gifts, and now Authority?”

Her anger had become envy so naked that Ludwig could almost smell it.

She launched herself forward.

To Redd, Gallows had been a nightmare of speed and old violence, cutting apart muscle and bone faster than his body could decide what shape to take next. To Ludwig, after fighting Usurpers, after standing in front of beings who rewrote death and pride through the weight of their existence, her charge looked almost disappointing. Fast, yes. Skilled, certainly. Deadly to most people alive and many who were not. But compared to the things he had recently measured himself against, she looked like something furious trying to convince a mountain that scratching at its base was the same as bringing it down.

Ludwig did not pull Nightbreaker.

There was no need to bring out the mace of Morde’Xander for her.

He did not call Noctivex.

There was no need to wrap himself in living metal and Wrath for something that could not force that level of respect from him.

He did not use the Eyes of Envy.

Why would he deprive strength from something weak?

And he did not call upon Wrath.

Only those worth placing in one’s sight were worth becoming angry at.

What moved through Ludwig instead was Pride, but not the overwhelming kind that crushed others beneath declarations, nor the condescending kind that needed to speak from above. This was disdain. The cold, quiet pity of someone watching an ant strain against a mountain and recognizing effort without acknowledging threat.

Gallows swung both chakrams in a crossing arc meant to take his head and wrist together.

Durandal moved once.

The sword struck the inner edge of the first chakram, redirected it into the second, and pushed both aside with such clean contempt that Gallows’s entire stance opened before she realized what had happened. Her abdomen was exposed, her ribs unguarded, her spine aligned perfectly for a cut that would have split her in half again. Ludwig saw it. She saw him see it.

He did not take the cut.

He let the opening pass.

For the first time, Gallows’s fury turned uncertain for half a breath. The insult reached her before the danger did. He had not missed. He had not failed to notice. He had simply decided that cutting her there would be pointless, and that refusal carved deeper than Durandal could have.

Her face twisted.

”Why you...” Her voice broke into something raw, almost childish in its hatred. ”Why do you get to be the favored son?”

She snapped both chakrams outward, and the rings blurred. Two became four, the edges catching pale light from the holy wards as she brought them down in a storm of circular steel. One came for Ludwig’s neck, one for his knee, one toward his sword arm, and the last curved toward his side with a delayed path meant to punish a normal parry.

Durandal rose in a single motion.

All four chakrams struck the blade and locked around it, spinning in place with a shriek of metal against steel. Sparks scattered across Ludwig’s face and coat. He held the sword steady with one hand, the force of the spinning weapons vibrating through the blade but failing to move his arm.

He looked at the trapped rings, then at Gallows. ”You know, Faceless was much better at using those than you. He also died...”

The chamber went still in the worst possible way.

Gallows stared at him, and the look in her eyes made even Redd’s breathing pause. The name had not merely angered her. It had reached into old wounds, old rivalries, and whatever pride remained among former Apostles who had all betrayed the same god and still resented one another for surviving differently.

Then she screamed.

Not a cry of pain. Not even battle rage. It was pure hatred breaking through the last veil of composure she had bothered wearing. She ripped the long priest robes away from her legs, tearing the white cloth apart and throwing it aside. Beneath the robes, a tattoo of thorny veins wrapped around both her thighs, black and deep red, coiling under the skin as if something metallic had been buried there and taught to grow.

Ludwig glanced down.

”Sorry,” he said. ”Not into crazy bitches.”

”SHUT UP!”

Her fingers dug into the tattooed flesh.

The skin split open.

Metal and thorn erupted from her thighs in twisting vines, wet with blood that immediately dried against their surface. The weapons uncoiled like living barbed wire, long tendrils of blackened steel studded with hooked thorns, the same vicious tools she had used back in Tulmud. They dragged themselves free from her body with a sound like knives being pulled through meat, then rose behind her in writhing arcs while her torn flesh healed around the tattoo marks as though nothing had happened.

Redd growled, low and furious, recognizing the weapons at once. His body leaned forward, wanting to throw itself into the fight again, but Ludwig lifted one hand slightly, not to command him as a master would, but to stop him from wasting the chance he had already given.

Kaiser’s eyes shifted toward the floating core. The wards around it were spinning faster now, the glowing blood lines pulsing in a rhythm that had become too steady to be harmless. He did not sound panicked when he spoke, which somehow made the warning worse.

”Don’t waste too much time, Ludwig.”

”I know,” Ludwig replied.

Gallows moved before the last word finished leaving his mouth.

The thorned metal vines lashed forward along with her, chakrams spinning in both hands, her torn priest robes fluttering around her like the remains of a bad joke. Redd pulled himself fully upright behind Ludwig, claws flexing, while Kaiser turned part of his attention toward the core and part toward the fight that was about to break the chamber apart.

Ludwig adjusted his grip on Durandal.

The real fight began.