Deus Necros

Chapter 518: Enemies Ahead

The message thinned and dissipated in front of Ludwig’s eyes.

Immediately afterward, the forest which looked like a maze simply opened up in front of him. Light tore through the trees and the darkness dissipated. Opening a path forward even he didn’t see before.

It was not a road laid down, but a logic offered: trunks stepped aside into a rhythm human feet could read, undergrowth drew back from the ankles, and scattered shafts of dirt mapped an easy line from shade to shade.

Heading forward, Ludwig thought about the conversation a bit. However, his train of thought was immediately and rudely cut by the interjection of the Lich in the lantern. “You’re lucky he didn’t crush you right there and then.” The voice came brittle with swallowed disdain, and that, more than the words, pricked at Ludwig’s mouth. Even the dead could be reminded of endings.

“Why would he?” Ludwig said, “He didn’t know I was an Undead,” the last part was spoken mentally. Who knows though the Dragon isn’t watching, you never know who or what might be listening in this forest. He let the thought slide along the inside of his skull rather than loose it. The habit of not trusting the air was older than this day.

“You’d be a fool to think he didn’t notice,” The Lich replied. “He is a dragon. He only stopped because of a technicality. The fact that you’re not Dead or Undead, but in between Life and that. And that was enough to allow you to pass…”

Technicality, an ugly, useful word. It made a fragile bridge sound like law. Ludwig’s fingers brushed the acorn once, not for comfort but for balance, the way a walker touches the wall in a dark stair.

Ludwig didn’t have a reply for the Lich’s words, so he simply kept quiet and moved ahead.

Silence, here, was not surrender. It was the right-sized tool for the road he had been given.

“So that was a dragon?” Thomas asked. He had seen old families fall and dukedoms burn, for a young noble, he was experienced in the way of the world, but not things as ancient and powerful as Dragons.

“Indeed,” the reply came from the Knight King. “A very old one at that too. I’ve seen a couple during my life, but never this close. You’re lucky,” The Knight King said.

His voice softened on lucky, not as flattery but as a veteran’s measurement. The scales balanced: alive now, lessons later.

“I guess.” Ludwig’s reply was too tame. The guess carried the small fatigue that often follows surviving a thing one had not expected to test, much less pass. He did not enlarge the word. He let it be as spare as he felt.

Ludwig continued on forward through the forest which seemed to open up for him with every step, revealing a pathing forward for him to move. The light that had been reluctant before now filtered down in pale bars, and dust… no…pollen, hung and drifted like the slow fall of gold leaf in some deep hall.

Soon he arrived at what looked like a clearing that had seen battle. The air changed there, went thin, went flat. The smell flagged it first: not the clean green, not sap, but the iron-sour drag of blood gone to brown. Flies should have sat in dark constellations, but the forest’s law had discouraged their feasting. What hummed was memory.

Stains of blood and half mangled corpses were littering the whole place. Most of them belonged to the soldiers of the empire. Banners and broken weapons and shields, with a rare sight of a broken scimitar or two.

The banners lay like torn tongues in the grass, colors muddied to one shade of old wine. Shield-rims gaped with hacked teeth. A hand still wore its leather thong of tokens, bits of wood burned with home-signs; they were quiet now, the stories on them cut short mid-syllable. The scimitars, alien curves, had the look of smiles struck from faces.

“Seems like there was a fight here, humans and…others. But I fail to see the non humans… no fur or marks on the ground, but the teeth mark are enough to tell that something else was fighting…” Ludwig said.

He thought about using “Rise Undead” to get more information from these corpses but then immediately shook the idea away. That would just make him a target for the Dragon who guards this place.

His hand had already half-lifted. He lowered it by degrees, feeling the weight of that almost. The lantern’s flame leaned in his peripheral vision showing him more of the damage but nothing to warrant the presence of any foreign beast.

Ludwig looked around for more clues, but found nothing worth noting. Though there was a trail of blood splatters that had dried over, seemingly moving up ahead and deeper into the forest.

Drops browned to rust marked stone and root: the measured, reluctant arithmetic of a wounded run. Here, a smear where someone stumbled and caught themselves on bark. There, a spray, quick panic, then discipline reasserted. The space between drops widened as the pace either slowed or steadied.

Ludwig began following the trail, it looked old, a day or two probably, so he needed to be careful in his tracking to not miss out anything.

He kept his boots to the edges of prints, set heel to moss rather than leaf-litter, he summoned his staff after withdrawing Nightbreaker and used the staff to prod and turn fallen leaves, tapping root, testing loam. The forest permitted his passage grudgingly, like a host who had acquiesced to let a guest into a room that should have remained closed.

Broken tree branches, blood on leaves, everything had to be noticed and noted for Ludwig to progress forward. And after what felt like hours had went by, and the darkness of the forest getting more and more pervasive as the sun was setting, Ludwig finally reached what looked like a small stone hill in the middle of the forest, there was a small clearing in the middle and a group of people who were foreigners of the empire seated there.