Deus Necros

Chapter 454: Bastos Van Dijk

The brilliance surged across the battlefield like a tidal wave of sanctity, so bright it erased shadow and form alike. Ludwig raised his arm instinctively, though he knew it would mean nothing. The moment the light touched him, it would unravel him utterly, strip the truth of his body bare and turn what remained into dust.

But it never touched.

At the instant of impact, the radiance fractured around him. A translucent wall of writhing darkness shimmered into being, curving overhead and pressing into the earth like the shell of some ancient creature. Its surface writhed with faint impressions of tentacles and shapes too alien for the mind to name. The light beat against it with the fury of divine judgment, but it did not break. It bent and guttered, scattering into streams of harmless glow that spilled into the ruined streets beyond.

Ludwig’s chest rose once, sharply. His jaw locked, though relief stabbed through him as sharp as any blade. Not ash. Not yet. For a fleeting second he felt gratitude, raw and unbidden, for the barrier that held back annihilation. Then the realization came, cold and inexorable: someone had chosen to protect him. Mot had chosen to protect him.

And that meant the boy had noticed.

The weight of the thought pressed heavy. Titania, the Holy Maiden herself, had turned the battlefield into a crucible of light. Any undead, any abomination would have been reduced to cinders. And yet Ludwig still stood, untouched, because Mot, of all people, had intervened. If the saint’s child servant of Azathoth had seen through him, then surely the most dangerous eyes of the Holy Order would as well.

His gaze flicked toward the boy, searching his expression. Mot chewed casually on the inside of his cheek, utterly calm, though the barrier around them shivered with every beat of Titania’s holy outpouring. His voice broke the silence, casual, almost indifferent.

“I’ve noticed before,” Mot said softly, “the way you avoid healing from the church. The way you’d rather bleed out than let their light touch you.” He turned his pale eyes, too wide for a child’s face, toward Ludwig. “I’m the same. My body doesn’t tolerate the Holy Order’s energy. It’s slows me down. Azathoth’s blood runs opposite theirs.”

“Thanks of the help,” Ludwig said, “I have a similar constitution, can’t tolerate their Light,” Ludwig replied calmly as he spat a few shards of glass that were still stuck in his mouth from before.

However he wasn’t calm on the inside, his back was sweating bullets that he escaped the calamity.

The words of mot had struck Ludwig like a cold wind. The weight in his chest eased slightly, though suspicion clung to him still. ’Thankfully he also can’t bask in the Holy Light’. He said nothing, simply tightened his grip on Oathcarver, eyes turning back to the figure at the center of the light.

Titania rose.

Her body, moments ago broken and blood-soaked, stood whole. The wounds had closed without scar, the flesh flawless, completely naked from head to toe, all of her armor and her clothes were burned away revealing her unmarred form.

She then flashed forward, landing a single palm onto the chest of the werewolf that struck the creature into several piles of rubble, her movements were no longer those of a weary fighter but of something elevated, a figure lifted from mortal frailty into something unearthly.

Her eyes had changed. No longer were they the sharp and calculating eyes of the war-maiden who had trained for centuries, but two blazing orbs of white light, devoid of iris, devoid of humanity. Her presence pressed into the air, heavy, radiant, suffocating. The men and women who had watched her fall now stumbled backward, unable to meet her gaze.

Her voice carried then, cutting across the ruin with effortless authority. “You dare foul this city with your stench?” It was Titania’s mouth that moved, but the tone was not hers. It was deeper, older, drenched in contempt. Each word struck like a weight upon the bones of those who heard it. “Beast of treachery… know your place before the hand that judges.”

The werewolf laughed as he rose from the rubble, not even a scratch on his body. A low, rolling sound, guttural and sharp. “So that’s what you’ve been hiding. A borrowed divinity. A descent. You let the gods wear your skin.” Its grin widened, fangs bared. “You think that makes you their equal? You’re still just meat wrapped in light.”

Titania did not answer. A blade materialized in her hands, woven from brilliance itself. She advanced without pause, naked save for the glow that now engulfed her, the harsh contours of divine radiance wrapping around her chest and hips as though modesty itself were shaped by heaven. But Ludwig had seen enough before the light concealed her, the scars absent, the wounds erased, the impossible perfection of a vessel no longer mortal.

The two forces met again.

The werewolf’s claws, dripping violet aura, lashed out. Titania’s sword met them with an eruption of radiance that blinded those too near. The collision cracked the very air, splintering the earth beneath their feet. Buildings in the street behind them trembled, then collapsed outright, walls giving way as the shock rippled outward.

Each connected strike blew out a wave of holy energy that echoed through the whole battlefield, forcing both Ludwig and Mot to simply stand their ground as they watched these titans fight.

Each exchange grew more savage. Titania pressed with inhuman ferocity, each swing of her blade tearing through streets, junctions, whole rows of homes. Light sheared walls like parchment, flung debris through the air in sheets of rubble. The werewolf met her savagery with equal ferocity, sacrificing limbs to carve openings. Clawing craters of blood and flesh through her body which immediately healed back as if they never happened. Though each exchanged was costly; an arm severed, a leg broken, he too was a monster in his own right, as each wound closed in grotesque regeneration even as his claws found her side or shoulder.

Ludwig watched, muscles tense, unable to intervene. His chest twisted with the bitter clarity of it. This was what true power looked like. Titans breaking cities with the weight of their duel. And he, he was nothing more than a shadow gnashing at their heels, powerless to influence the tide. Once again, a reminder, a shrimp’s back always breaks when whales fight. And he was that shrimp, no matter how valiantly he had fought against the Moon Flayed King that lay burning from Titania passively emitting Holy Light, he knew well enough that he was still far too weak.

The longer the battle raged, the more vicious Titania became. Her sword blurred, her strikes heedless of the structures collapsing around her. Dust clouded the streets, screams of survivors carried faintly from far off, drowned beneath the roar of godlight and beast’s fury. She was no longer fighting as Titania. She was a war-maiden of light incarnate, a vessel driven by will not her own.

And yet, the werewolf endured. Its laughter, even amidst the ruin, cut through the air. Each time she pressed him down, he rose again, his grin widening, his body knitting from ruin into ruinous strength once more.

Then, as the duel reached its crescendo, they stopped. Blades locked against claws, light grinding against violet aura, bodies straining but neither giving way. A stalemate. Titania’s radiance flickered faintly at the edges of her form, her body trembling as the holy descent waned. The light in her eyes dimmed, breath returning ragged and human.

The werewolf sneered, lips curling back as he sensed the shift. “So the meat covered in light has a time limit, this should be fun, to see you struggle so soon.”

However, he never had the time to see her light dying down completely.

Since the city itself trembled.

The dome of purple shadow and magic that had encased Tulmud’s capital shook with sudden force, a pressure so immense it pressed down on the lungs of every living thing within. Dust cascaded from shattered archways, rubble split anew. It was as if a meteor was threatening to fall down and flatten the entire city.

All eyes turned skyward.

Above the city, framed against the bloody glow of the false red moon, a figure appeared. His presence alone cracked the air. A man hovered there, his eyes burning with such unholy fury they seemed carved from blood and murder itself. His gaze locked upon the werewolf, and the promise within it was not war, it was annihilation.

“Van Dijk?” Ludwig couldn’t help but mutter, his eyes as wide as they can get.