Deus Necros

Chapter 556: Explanation

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Misty said as she gripped her anchor tight.

The word tripped over itself four times and caught on the stone. The chain at her wrist trembled, a nervous rattle that did not belong to metal. She had gone pale to the lips. The little gold at her throat picked up the cold light and looked like a thing trying to shine through ash.

Ludwig watched the way her eyes fixed on him and then slid off and then walked back, as if whatever shape she saw could not be held in the mind for long without making the hands shake. He frowned. He had not thought she would balk like that.

For a breath he wondered how he looked to her in this state. The violet cast that sometimes clung to his skin had not fully burned off. The heat in his bones had not settled. The amulet lay cool on his chest and did what it could to smooth the edge from his thoughts. It could not soften the way she flinched.

“What’s wrong?” Ludwig asked as he approached the terrified paladin. He kept his blade down and his shoulders loose. His steps made very little sound on the gritted floor. The chamber smelled of salt and rust and old dust. Breath showed like a thin veil in the colder patches of air.

She could not help the little yelp that came out. “D-don’t kill me! I won’t spread your secret!”

He frowned again. “Hah?” His head tilted a fraction. The expression was plain rather than sharp. “Why would I kill a companion? Are you okay?” He offered his hand for her to stand.

She stared at the hand longer than he expected, as if it were a knife offered hilt first. Habit and trust nudged past training. She took it. A thread of sanctity still clung to her skin. It sizzled faintly where it touched his and left a shallow sting that tasted of incense and iron. It was weak and almost not there, only enough to mark the point of contact and make his dead nerves whisper. He did not draw back. He drew her up with the steady ease of a man lifting a bucket from a well.

“I mean… undead and all… and” she pointed at herself with a small, unsteady motion, “Holy member and all…”

“And?” he said. “You think that I deserve death because I am undead?”

“The doctrines…”

“Ah, forget the doctrines. Think with your head.” His tone roughened at the edge. “Do you think you can afford to even kill me?”

“N-no but if you let me go… you might end up being prosecuted…”

The look he gave her held more patience than warmth. “Are you sure you want to live?” The way she had arranged her words put her on a cliff without a path back down.

“No, I did not mean that, I mean, you can trust me, but you should not, I mean…” The sentence tangled. Her mouth shut on it and she bit the inside of her cheek and swallowed.

Ludwig sighed. The sound slid out of him and went into the stone. “Think for a second. Who was that man?” He pointed to the scorched smear where the Faceless Blade had gone to ash. The floor still breathed a little heat there. Dust clung to it like fine black flour.

“A former servant of Necros…”

“And what did he call me?”

“A brother…”

“I am not his brother. The other thing.”

“You are also a servant of Necros?”

“I am the servant of Necros,” he said. “The only one. Bound to him by body, mind and soul, and sent to remove what should have gone and will not go. Necros sent me to take down those who lived too long and refused to perish. Morde’Xander was one. There are six more to go. Do you think I care much for the small quarrels of mortals while that work stands?”

“But the Holy Order…”

“When did the Holy Order ever become an issue to me?” He shrugged and looked along the wall at the rows of bodies held by iron. “We should get them off those walls.”

He set his foot to move and the world rang in his chest. It was the sound of a bell struck once and struck clean. It reverberated along the hollow inside him, through ribs and spine, and then settled like a stone dropped into still water. His hand closed over the place where a heart should have been quiet.

“Ah, this is painful,” he said. The words were not dramatic. They were plain, spoken for measure, not for sympathy.

“A-are you okay?” Misty asked, caught between the urge to touch and the memory of the small sizzle that touch had made.

“Just a second. My heart is beating back. Again.”

“Aren’t you dead though?”

“No, I am not.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “I am Undead. But only when I die.”

It did not make sense to her, not yet. Her expression carried the shape of the thought but not its weight. The bell struck again. The Heart of Wrath that had gone still woke. Red light moved through its facets like a sunrise through frozen glass.

Vitality pushed out of the crystal and through the channels where blood should run. It threaded dead muscle with heat. It set old nerves to find each other and knit. The grave gave up its claim inch by inch and then suddenly. Life, or what wore life’s coat, slipped over the frame. The gauntness eased from his mouth. Color returned. The chill in his hands broke.

He took breath. He flexed his fingers. He rolled one shoulder and then the other as if settling a weight into place.

“Better now?” he asked with a small smile.

“Much…” she said. Her mouth smiled back. The concern stayed in her eyes because worry does not leave on command.

“This is what I look like normally. If I die, I come back as an Undead for a time, then return to this. It is a good way to fake death, and a better way to avoid the attention of your church. In this form I pass as any other man.” He looked at her directly. “So even if you tell them I am Undead, holy magic on me will do little besides make me feel refreshed.” He laughed once, quiet in the throat.

“I am not going to say that,” Misty said.

“You will go against your oaths?”

“No. I will simply not report what is not needed. You came, you killed the Former Apostle, you saved people. That is enough. Besides, with the current pope, if I bring them a paradox, I doubt I will be thanked for my trouble.”

“Later,” he said. “Let me get Titania out first.”

Titania hung like a crucified star. Iron pinned wrists and feet. The flesh struggled stubbornly to grow around the metal and was kept from it by the bite of the nail. Ludwig set his hand to the first spike. It was thick as a tent peg and had been driven with a careful cruelty. He twisted. The stone complained with a long tired groan. The iron slid out in small jerks as if reluctant to leave. Her arm fell from the wall with a weight that spoke of blood loss and nerve damage. He caught it and lowered it. He eased his fingers under her wrist to see if the pulse told him anything he did not already know. It told him she was alive and that was all.

Misty had gone to the nearest captive and set her hands to work. The first touch made the bound woman convulse. Without eyes and without a tongue there was no scream, only a full body attempt at one. Fear lived plainly in the face even without its parts. Misty spoke anyway, low and even and constant. She laid the sound down like a line for the mind to hold while she dragged the iron out.

Ludwig turned back to Titania. He was ready for the second nail to be like the first. It was the same. She did not stir. She did not jolt. She did not breathe faster. He felt the prickle at the back of his neck before he understood why. Her head had shifted without motion. The empty hollows of her face did not see. Yet the angle of chin and mouth had aligned with his. It had the steady feel of an archer drawing to sight.

He looked closely at the torn sockets. They were clean and cruel. There was no mistake there. The thought that she might yet see died, but the sense that she knew remained. He took the second nail and twisted and drew it out. Blood ran from the new holes in quiet sheets. He set her down where the floor was flatter and kept the run of blood away from her hair.

He stepped toward the next captive and a hand closed on his boot. Cold fingers. Weak but deliberate. Titania. She pointed. The arm shook as if it wanted to go where the finger indicated and could not. He followed the line of it. The far wall. The place he had fought. He waited for her to let go. She did not. He inclined his head and went where she sent him.

Behind him Misty worked in a rhythm that did not rely on grace. Nail, breath, steady words, lift, settle, turn. The air filled with the metallic tang of new blood joining old. The chain on her wrist whispered each time she reached high.

At the far side where Ludwig just arrived a small idol crouched near the ground. Ludwig scraped grit away with the back of his knuckles. It was the crow-faced figure they had passed before, cut small, set with thin ribs of carved feather, beak bowed, wings half folded. Runes had been etched around the base and then bound with thorn thread. Dried blood had been painted over and over until it gleamed in the dim light like lacquer. The wrongness was not loud. It pressed into the back of the skull the way an ill prayer sometimes did in a bad temple.

The system answered his look.

[Key of the Moon Tomb]

This is a key that can be used to open and close the hidden chambers of the Moon Tomb. It can only be used by the Moon Princess.

It has reached 99% corruption.

Once it reaches 100 it will forcefully open the hidden chambers of the Moon Tomb.

It needs more blood to forcefully open the chambers.

He felt his mouth flatten. The pool of blood that had gathered from eyes and tongues had been directed with care. It crept toward the idol along shallow grooves carved into the stone like channels in parched earth where rain had once run. He did not like the way the runes warmed when a fresh line reached them.

“Misty,” Ludwig said.

“What is it?” she asked. The scrape of iron leaving stone answered for a moment and then stopped. She had just eased another weight down. She stood and came with quick steps, wiping her hands on the edge of her robe and then thinking better of it. She stopped when she saw the idol. Her face changed in a way that did not need words.

He tilted the thing so she could see the bound runes and the crust of old red. The air close to it felt thin and tasted of copper. “Come here please,” he said.

She did, though her eyes kept cutting back to the bound and freed as if a heartbeat away from turning back. She did not like leaving a work half done. Right now there were too many half dones and not enough hands.

“What is it?” she asked again, softer now that she stood over the thing.

He looked from the key to her, measuring the lines in his head and the cost of each. “Care to give me some of your blood? Dear?” He kept the tone even and almost light, the way one asks for a small tool at a forge.