Deus Necros

Chapter 545: Moon and Sword

Ludwig was impressed by how nonchalant everyone was about the ship crushing one of the sand worms as if they were nothing, leaving them behind like some unfortunate road kill. He turned to the captain asking “I suppose this should also work against the bigger worms?”

“Nope,” the captain said, “All the big worms are big for a reason,” she explained, “They don’t grow that size just because they eat a lot, but because they know how to survive. If a big one truly wanted to take a bite of this ship, it’ll split us in half. But they never do, they are very timid and are afraid of confrontation, they only fight when its mating season, and that has long since passed. For now they’ll all avoid us.” She said. Her thumb rubbed the edge of her holster as she spoke, an old habit checking a familiar tool.

“I see,” Ludwig said as he approached the railing “Still, it bothers me that you’re using this ship for transportation.” He leaned out and watched the bow shove sand aside in two smooth, silent curls. The desert ran from them with the unhappy grace of a cat being pushed from a warm chair.

“Why?” the captain asked. She tilted her hat back a finger’s width and followed his line of sight, as if she might see through his thought by looking where he looked.

“After all, aren’t there portals?” Ludwig asked, a simple question with a lot of weight.

She shook her head, “Not for the Kingdom of the sands, the King had decreed that they shall not be used nor created. As they can facilitate the infiltration of foe and enemies to the kingdom.” She said it without bitterness, only with the patience of someone who has repeated a law often to people who do not like it.

“Quite stupid to be honest.” Ludwig said. He did not soften the word. Sand had a way of burning manners away.

“Well, I won’t argue the point,” Misty said, “It is a terrifying thing to create a point where your enemies can immediately appear onto the heart of your country. But at the same time it also facilitates travel and helps the country’s economy.” She said. Her fingers tapped the suitcase in a small rhythm, counting the arguments out on the metal.

“It does, but at the same time,” the captain said, “Without the gates we have our jobs, we move around the oasis and the outer region of the kingdom of the sand, doing trade with both the empire and the kingdom, albite on a limited scale. We make earning and facilitate the entry of foreign products to both countries. With gates opened both ways we’d be begging on the sand. Still,” she said as she sighed. For a moment the line of her mouth softened. Her eyes went to her crew and counted them, as captains do without moving their lips.

“The war is making things difficult?” Ludwig said. He watched the men at the ropes. Knots went up, knots came down. One sailor wore three water-skin stoppers on a cord about his neck like charms against a bad season.

“Yes, it’s been quiet for the past month, but with the disappearance of our Royal Guard Captain and the Princess of the Moon, the situation is getting quite messy…” she said. The words drew a small circle of silence around them. A few of the deckhands looked away from the horizon as if the horizon might look back with that name in it.

“Wait, hold on,” Ludwig said, he looked at Misty who had the same thoughts as him, “When did they disappear?” he asked. The air felt a touch cooler. Names could do that. They pulled weather with them.

“Three days ago, everyone heard the news, the princess had left for some foreign relation work and after she didn’t return, the Guard Captain followed after her, both have yet to return.” The captain’s hands tightened on the rail and then released, as if she had just reached for a rope that was no longer there.

“They couldn’t be dead… right?” Ludwig asked. It was not fear in his tone, only the habit of checking the worst first.

She shook her head, “The Princess of the Moon has a special position in the Kingdom, she is bound by divinity and if she were to die, a new princess would be appointed. No revelation had come, and no new Princess was assigned so she must still be alive… it’s just,” she looked at the broad horizon, “No one knows where she is.” The line of dunes wavered with heat. Distance turned into doubt and then back again.

“Same thing happened to us…” Misty said. Her voice thinned, then steadied. The suitcase’s corner dug into her shoulder and she took the small pain as if to keep the larger worry from widening.

Ludwig didn’t know if it was wise to speak of matters regarding the highest figures of power and influence of the empire to potential enemies. But he didn’t speak. His silence gave Misty room, and his eyes stayed on the captain’s face, measuring how the woman wore news and if she would use it.

“Lady Titania and the Hero are both missing…” Misty said. The words left her with a kind of care that made the crew lean in without knowing they did. The name Titania on the open air had the weight of a storm’s name.

“This feels like a setup,” the captain said as her face turned sour. She spat into the sand wake as if to cut the taste. “You take the water from the mouths of a people, then you hide their moon and their sword. That is not chance.”

“You have any idea where they went?” Ludwig asked. His fingers drummed once on the rail, then stilled. The Heart turned its ear. Patterns came quickly in deserts, sometimes because there were none to block them.

“The last known location of the Guard Captain was the Maho Desert. It’s about a day’s journey on this vessel, you want to go there?” she asked. She already knew the answer. The air around Ludwig tightened the way it does around a man about to move.

“Yes, but I thought you wanted to restock?” Ludwig asked. He did not say do your duty or change course. He asked, and it sounded like choosing speed over safety, and she heard it for what it was.

The captain smiled, “Restocking can wait, if we manage to save the Princess or the Guard Captain, we’ll be set for life. ’ANDY! TO MAHO!’” Her grin showed teeth that had bitten hard bread and bad choices and did not regret either.

“AYE!” the man named Andy immediately spun the wheel with one hand to the left, the whole ship turned in accordance. The rudder groaned. The deck tilted. Sand sheared from the prow in high skirts. The sail caught a better line and filled. A cheer went up that sounded like men deciding to gamble with something that was never entirely theirs. The dunes ahead shifted, and the ship, eager and loud, wrote its path over the desert’s blank page.

***

“Fuck…”

The curse tore free from her throat and ricocheted through the void, echoing again and again until it dissolved into the vast emptiness.

They stood in a place where the world above had long since been buried, a cavernous abyss that stretched beyond sight, its ceiling a suffocating weight of stone and soil. No sun. No moon. No stars. Only the tremor of the earth and the slow drip of unseen water echoing from the black. The air was damp and cold, thick with the stench of decay and something far fouler, a scent that didn’t belong to the mortal realm.

Beneath that tomb of rock, a circle of survivors clung to life. Priests, paladins, soldiers, each back pressed against another, blades drawn and eyes wide with dread. Their armor was dented, their robes torn, their faith fraying by the second.

At the center of their formation stood a woman with silver hair streaked in grime and blood. Titania. Her knuckles whitened around her sword’s hilt as its once-holy glow flickered like a dying ember. The golden light that should have burned with divine wrath now trembled, unstable, a candle fighting a storm.

Around her, the priests mouthed prayers in desperation, yet their words dissolved before they could take shape. The air here devoured faith; it swallowed sound itself. Even the name of God turned to dust on the tongue. No blessing answered. No light descended. Only silence, and the slow, gnawing terror that they had been abandoned.

Before them sprawled a grotesque mound of bodies. Hundreds of creatures, some dead, others twitching in half-life, piled upon one another in a writhing mass. Their flesh fused and split, birthing arms from ribs and spines. Their faces were smooth, eyeless planes with nothing but a gaping circular maw where mouths should be, lined with spirals of teeth that shimmered like shards of glass. Each breath they drew whistled through their fangs, a sound like wind howling through broken bones.

And beyond that writhing mountain of blasphemy stood the one who commanded them.

A figure taller than any mortal, gaunt, towering, and utterly wrong. His flesh clung to him like wet parchment over sticks, his ribs sharp as scythes beneath the skin. His face was hidden behind a moving veil of darkness, shifting like smoke, erasing any trace of humanity. Where his eyes should have been, the void stared back.

In each hand, he held a circular blade, a pair of chakrams forged from black steel, their edges singing softly as he spun them around his fingers. The motion was lazy, almost elegant. The kind of ease that only comes from a lifetime, no, a thousand lifetimes, of killing.

“You lot seem to be struggling still,” he said.His voice did not travel through the air, it vibrated through the earth itself, creeping through stone, bone, and flesh until it shivered behind their hearts.

Then came the next wave.

A hundred more of the creatures hurled themselves forward, clawing over the corpses of their own kind. Their movements were erratic but relentless, driven by a hunger that didn’t need purpose. Titania moved before the others could even breathe. Her sword carved arcs of dim gold through the dark, splitting bodies in half, severing limbs that twitched even after they fell. Ichor sprayed, sizzling where it struck her armor.

But every strike she landed came with a cost.A whisper of steel. A flash of motion.The chakrams flew.

They screamed through the air, one grazing her cheek, the other severing a priest’s arm in a spray of blood. A third caught a soldier across the chest, cutting through armor as though it were silk. The man didn’t even scream before collapsing. The monsters filled the gap his body left.

Titania staggered, breath heaving. Her muscles burned. The divine fire in her veins was nearly gone, replaced by exhaustion and fury. Still, she fought, because behind her, in the center of their desperate ring, lay him.

The Hero.

Unconscious. Motionless. His armor cracked, his weapon shattered beside him. The man who was supposed to lead them out of this hell, the one they were dying to protect, was little more than a corpse who hadn’t realized it yet.

Titania’s eyes darted toward him between swings. Every time she looked, she felt the same thing twist in her chest: rage at him for falling, despair that he might never rise again, and the smallest, most fragile spark of hope that he somehow would. And the utter futility that her men were dying for someone who so far didn’t prove he was worth dying for.

But hope didn’t last long here.

Another creature lunged. She split it down the middle, black ichor splattering across her face. Her arms trembled. Her sword’s light sputtered again, dimming to a dull glimmer.

And once more, from between clenched teeth, the word came out,

not as a curse this time, but as a prayer to no one.

“Fuck.”