Deus Necros

Chapter 533: A Test of Endurance

Ludwig could almost see her thoughts in a bubble as she sprinted far faster than any other human could. He matched her stride without leaning into it, arms loose, feet quiet, eyes already mapping the lay of the land ahead. The Heart pushed at his ribs like a hunting hound tugging against a leash, impatient not for blood, but for proof. The amulet took that tug and turned it into a steady pull that did not break his form.

But, just as she turned her head, she saw the smiling face of Ludwig who raised a hand to her, “So when are we picking up the pace?” he said, the smile wide and his feet following her strides with equal measure. His voice arrived level, not winded, as if they had been walking a lane rather than cutting the forest in long, effortless arcs. The expression was polite on the surface, teasing beneath, a question sharpened to glint rather than cut.

“R-right now, I thought you couldn’t keep up!” she said, embarrassed that the human was more than capable of following her strides. The flush that had cooled on her cheeks came back hotter. She drove forward with a small, angry lift of the knee and lengthened her reach. Bark blurred. moonlight fell in rungs that she climbed and left behind.

She forced herself to go faster, and faster. The trees almost became a blur, and at this speed she thought she could cross the whole forest in less than a day. Though there was no way she could keep this tempo, but for a dweller of nature, an Elf, she can rapidly recuperate from the natural energy around her, the human cannot. She let her breath thin to a strip and held it there just below the stitch, pulling from the root-thick air around them, letting the small threads of life in the wood stitch into her lungs and legs. Her calves burned and then cooled in waves as the forest answered her. The ground itself seemed to lean forward to help.

She turned to see how far the distance between them was, as she wanted to make sure he was still in eyeshot and not lost, to call him on his incapability, if she were to lose him, he can claim that she did it on purpose. She risked the glance like a gambler palms a coin, quick and practiced, intending to be kind if he had fallen back and merciless if he had not.

However, she only got shocked when the same face, smiling, with a wavering hand was right behind her. “Yo” he said. His hand fluttered once in airy greeting, palm open, the way one waves to a child peering out from behind a door. The sound of his step never rose above the whisper of her own.

Gulping hard, she turned her head, she couldn’t go any faster, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to get exhausted, he’s but a human. So she ran, and ran, and ran further and faster, but she dreaded turning back this time, she just sprinted as fast as she could, her ego could never allow her to turn this time and see him behind her, but this time she noticed something, that she could only hear her footsteps. The forest’s chorus narrowed to the hammer in her throat, the brush of her own breath between teeth, the thud of boots on packed loam. The absence of his sound crawled across the back of her neck. She poured what remained of her spite into pace and let it carry her.

Having ran so much, and for close to an hour, her entire body was pleading her to stop, especially since they were at the range of the Sand dwellers’ hidden camp. The scent of the trees shifted, resin giving way to a dry mineral tang riding the wind from the west. Her thighs shivered under the skin. Sweat cooled in a line down her spine and then heated again when the wind dropped.

A small few minutes break should be enough, so she decided to stop, decelerating. Just as she stopped she turned, and didn’t see Ludwig anywhere, seems like he was left behind. Relief flared and tried to set like a smile. She pressed her palm flat to the nearest trunk and let the bark steady the tremor in her knees. Her breath sawed loud in her own ears. The silence behind her was a gift she accepted quickly.

’It’ll take a few minutes to recover my breath, I’ll do it while he’s still struggling-’ She counted heartbeats and calculated how many would pass before she could stand straight without giving it away.

“I guess we’ve made it,” she heard, looking up, Ludwig was standing atop the tree branch above her, his hand over his eyes to try and see up ahead. He had taken the higher path while she drove straight, and now he scanned the line where forest began to fray into scrub, and low trees.

“How? How come you’re already here?” Her voice cracked on the first word and she hated that it did. She pushed her shoulders back to make it seem like a choice.

“You sound like you wanted to leave me in the dust now, wouldn’t be a fun thing for your princess to learn of.” He let the reminder land soft, not threat, simply fact, as if they were discussing weather and not betrayal of escort.

“No!” she huffed, “I mean! Your breath, it isn’t even strained!” The admission cost her a sliver of pride. She covered it with indignation and did not look at his chest for fear of seeing it move too calmly.

“Ah, that. Well, what can I say, my stamina is pretty good, you on the other hand look like you’re about to cough a lung, should we take a rest?” Ludwig smiled. It was not unkind. He tilted his head toward the shadow of a leaning trunk that would have held them both and pretended not to notice the tremor in her hands.

“N-no! we’ll move right now! Let’s clean up the camp first!” she said The urgency in the words steadied her better than any pause would have. She straightened, smoothed her hair back with the back of her wrist, and forced the heat in her lungs into a hard, contained knot.

She couldn’t believe that a human was able to cross that distance without feeling exhausted, he was faking it and hiding it, and a battle was bound to reveal his true nature. She clung to that logic like a railing, because the alternative would make her doubt her place among her own.

She walked up toward the camp, trying her best to stop her burning lungs from exposing the fact she was heavily intaking air. Each inhale she forced through the nose, each exhale shaped to quiet, shoulders tight to hide the shake. The smell of oil and old smoke bled into the cleaner scents of the forest. Sand had been carried here on boots and ground into the bark along a man-high swath. People had been moving in and out for days.

Lost in thought, she realized that she failed to make Ludwig show any weakness in the sprint, but in a fight, she was determined to be the one to take the most heads. And that opportunity was right ahead of them.