Deus Necros

A tremor passed beneath Ludwig’s boots, subtle at first, then sharp enough to send a web of fractures skittering across the floor. From the remains of the Queen’s body, heat still surged, black ichor steaming off her sundered bark-flesh. Yet the twitching had not stopped. The roots were stirring with a disjointed purpose. Her limbs, now half-charred stumps, convulsed in erratic patterns as though something deeper within the husk was testing the reach of its new skin.

Ludwig said nothing. He held Celine close, chains taut with tension, feeling her weight growing heavier in his arms, not because of her condition but because her muscles were beginning to resist. The kind of resistance that didn’t come from confusion. Her body remembered what it was. The twitch in her left hand became a curl of her fingers. Her breath, shallow and irregular, carried the faint sound of a growl caught between her ribs.

The Order, still caught in their illusion of righteousness, fanned out around him in a cautious semicircle. Their glowing swords were now pointed toward the Queen, though one or two had their eyes drifting toward Ludwig’s silhouette. The afterglow of necromantic fire still clung to his figure, the acidic stench of burnt bone and ruptured flesh painting him in a light that was difficult to decipher. They hadn’t approached yet. Not fully. But they were beginning to look. To think.

The Cardinal’s voice rang out, sharp and clear. “Paladins, form a crescent. Shields forward. Push it back.”

The Queen let out a guttural moan, low and wet. Her entire body twitched, the still-burning bark of her torso shifting like diseased leather trying to reknit itself. Smoke clung to her like a shroud. Yet still, beneath that charring ruin, something vital moved.

Mot, impossibly still beside the Cardinal, stared at Ludwig. Not at the Queen. Not at the flaming remains or the chaos. At him.

Ludwig didn’t like the way the boy’s pale, lidless eyes lingered. There was no judgment in them, but no understanding either. Just observation.

The Cardinal stepped forward, his gaze sharp beneath his gilded brow. “Paladin Fereth, get a reading,” he said coldly.

A younger knight knelt, touching a sigil upon his wrist. The magic shimmered in his palm, a quiet hum building as he prepared to scan the battlefield. Ludwig’s fingers tightened around the hilt of Oathcarver. He didn’t move. His face, still cloaked beneath the false image of living flesh, remained expressionless. He didn’t need to look at Celine to feel the shift in her veins. Her thirst was returning.

The paladin’s magic spread out, a wave of bright disturbing light washed all over the place.

Ludwig was already preparing to see which person was he going to crack his head first the moment the aura of that paladin’s magic touches him.

And just as it washed over him, the paladin’s face snapped to him.

‘Fuck,’ Ludwig cursed under his breath.

“Sir, there is a lot of dark magic surrounding you!” the paladin shouted, “Move out of there, this foul thing’s magic is cursed and it’s affecting you.” He added.

The Werewolf held a snicker that no one seemed to notice but Ludwig at how foolish these guys were, there was an Undead right in front of them, and it was the paladins giving him excuses instead.

“Its but the aftermath of the Queen’s spell, I’m unharmed,” Ludwig said.

“Dark magic is sinister, it can perfoliate through you, you should get one of the paladins to do a cleansing spell on you once we’re done,” the young man said.

“Sure thing,” Ludwig said as he noticed Celine moving a bit.

A quiet rasp escaped her throat. Her fingers curled slightly beneath the chains, and Ludwig felt the subtle pull against his grip. It was like holding a live wire, one that hadn’t sparked yet but might at any second. Her scent was stronger now, blood and old smoke, and something behind her eyelids twitched as if dreams were beginning to bleed into her waking.

Instead, he adjusted his footing, a slow motion that passed for a warrior’s readiness, and muttered under his breath, “Stay asleep.”

Celine responded by baring the tip of a fang. Her head lolled to the side, not unconscious but watching. Her eyes remained half-lidded, and yet something behind them had begun to ignite again. Hunger. Reflex. Blood memory.

The Queen’s carcass split open.

It wasn’t a rise, nor a resurrection, but a tearing. A low, pulsing vibration emanated from the torn roots. Then a screech, thinner than before, yet deeper somehow. Ludwig’s bones prickled with it, a resonance that didn’t travel through sound but something older. The kind of frequency that slithered through marrow and left rot in its wake.

Paladin Fereth’s spell shattered in his hands.

“Back!” he shouted, stumbling from the sheer backlash. “That thing is not dead!”

Mot’s head tilted at the revelation, but his expression remained unreadable. The Cardinal barked orders at once, his voice filling the grotto with command. “Holy stance! Spheres of warding! Shields left and right!”

The formation took less than a second, paladins moving like clockwork. Swords interlocked, light flaring around their boots. Yet none of them stepped in front of Ludwig. He stood apart, and now the distance was beginning to feel deliberate. Suspicion simmered at the edges of their glances.

Ludwig felt it. Every eye was trying to decide whether to see him as ally or foe. He didn’t blame them. His presence still dripped with necrotic energy. His presence was not cleansed by their rites. And in his grasp, bound in silver-linked chains, was a vampire they had yet to notice. But soon would.

If she moved first, they would not ask questions.

The Queen gave another sound, this time something like laughter through meat. Her limbs convulsed outward again. Not just twitching now, but reforming.

And behind Ludwig, Celine’s restraints twitched.

He looked down, lips parting slightly as her eyes opened. Full, bright, and entirely aware.

He did not speak. Not her name. Not a warning. Nothing.

He simply stared.

And for a moment, her eyes locked on his, seeing him not as a captor or a threat, but something else. Something unplaceable. Her expression was unreadable. But she did not move. Not yet.

Thankfully, she seemed to have realized that the person in front of her was wearing a disguse otherwise Ludwig was sure that his neck would have snapped in two in the time it took him to blink.

The ground beneath the Queen split open once more.

Ludwig raised his sword slowly. His body ached, he’s been doing this for only he knows how long, the loops and the retries and the attempts were bound to make one’s mind feel some form of exhaustion. But he lifted Oathcarver all the same.

“Be careful my children, the foes we fight today are not just one,” the cardinal said, “Saint Mot… can you take care of that thing perched up there?”

Mot looked up, “It isn’t mine to slay, nor am I supposed to, it will remain there harmless unless provoked, and I believe we gain nothing from provoking it…”

“Is that your words or your god’s words?” the Cardinal scuffed, he needed his report to be clean, and the death of one paladin unrevenged would be a blemish on his record. So he needed to get rid of that werewolf even if using Mot’s hands.

“They’re his,” Mot turned his head to the werewolf who seemed completely unbothered with all the hundred enemies that swarmed the place.

Still perched up above them, the werewolf yawned and drummed his fingers against his leg.

“They understand nothing,” he muttered.

Ludwig stepped forward. Unlike the holy order, they didn’t know what is beneath the Queen. And all that they were doing was surrounding bark and roots, where the real foe is down below.

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