Deus Necros

Chapter 550: Infinite Blade Works

One chakram in hand was all the man needed to stop Ludwig’s incoming blow. For a fraction of a second, Ludwig’s sword, along with him were held in space by the raised hand carrying the chakram. It was a skinny hand, one that belonged to a man who hadn’t eaten for a hundred years or so, yet it was easily capable of stopping Ludwig’s blow along with the weight of Durandal. The ring sang. Sparks took short lives and died against the hooded chest. Ludwig felt the meeting not in the wrists but in the spine. The stop was absolute and effortless. It told him too much about the gulf between intent and result. There was too much strength behind that skinny arm, so much of it that it kept Ludwig in the air for a second or so.

“Why now, why are we so hasty? Brother!” he asked. The word brother landed soft and wrong. It tried to put them on the same side. It tried to build a bridge with bone.

Ludwig pressed on with his sword, and used the power behind his muscles to push himself and the man a pace or so back. Boot against dust. The ground answered with a hiss. The hooded figure’s heels slid half an inch. It was not much, but it was mark enough to keep the mind disciplined.

“Ooh, quite the strength you have there,” he turned his face to look at the young man clad in golden and white armor, the hero, “Unlike that trash who simply swung his sword around, you seem to have some skill, tell me how long have you been using The sword?” the man asked though Ludwig could feel that he didn’t ask for knowledge, but simply to put mental pressure on Ludwig. To corner him, make him think more of useless things. The voice was a careful instrument. It squeezed where anger gathers. It brushed questions across old scar lines and waited for the flinch.

Advantage, any form sort or shape of it is good if given, and Ludwig was going to give none. He let the breath come to the bottom of the ribs and stay there. He did not offer an answer. He did not let the eyes wander to the hero’s armor. He let the silence stand between them like a plank placed over a gap.

The hero is just a child playing swordsman, foolish, juvenile in thinking, and has too many responsibilities to even carry, nor does he even belive he should. It is nothing but a waste of braincell effort to think of him. Though having missing eyes and tongue would make him less of an annoyance, Ludwig needed to score a few good points with the church, if at least to get them off his back for some time.

A whirl of a gale flew past Ludwig’s ears, at first he thought he was attacked by something, but there was no killing intent. The wind had the smell of metal cleaned with oil and a sweetness that belonged to sanctified cloth. It was a sound that announced help and danger in the same instant.

Only then did Ludwig see the anchor flying past him. The links spoke their hard language. The pitch of the rattle told of distance and speed. The curve of the throw was true enough to make the gut want to cheer.

The anchor that Misty had carried was thrown with such force the object itself was faster than the sound it made. A terrifying force inside the body of a small looking priestess, no Paladin as she called herself. Her feet planted in the doorway shadow. Her shoulders rolled with the swing. The chain paid out clean from the cuff without a single kink.

“Wretched fiend!” was the only two words that Ludwig could hear before the impact of an even more deafening noise echoed in front of him. The servant of Necros, former… had struck the incoming anchor at the bottom with his own chakram, immediately parrying the entire object with a smaller one, where the anchor flew away from him and struck the nearest wall. The parry was almost gentle. A small touch placed with obscene accuracy. It changed the anchor’s future by the width of two fingers and doomed a life.

A moment later, Ludwig’s side was splashed with something, it wasn’t harmful at first, but felt quite warm, and very disturbing, metallic even. Ludwig’s eyes glanced to his side, his regalia was covered in the substance. Blood, red, warm blood. It ran down the seam and filled the crease at the elbow. It cooled quickly in the draft. The smell of it arrived before the mind allowed meaning.

The anchor was parried so hard and so accurately it struck a soldier who could never see it coming in the chest, the crucified soldier’s body was pulverized. The body gave a single full-body twitch and fell still. The chain rang once more as it recoiled against the stone. Shards of the wall peppered the floor.

“Now, now,” the man said, “don’t go on wasting my artistic creation, not even Crucendo can judge my eye for art!” His pleasure at his own words was a palpable thing. He held the chakram as a painter holds a brush after a clever stroke. The hood turned a little toward the plates as if waiting for applause from those robbed of eyes and tongues.

Misty’s whole body began shaking as she realized that she was the cause of the death of one of the soldiers. The fingers at the cuff twitched. The chain slackened and then pulled hard as if to undo what had been done. Breath snagged high in her chest. The stone under her boots seemed to tilt.

“N-no!” Misty’s words slurred and stuttered as she realized what she had just done. She took half a step back and hit the jamb of the passage with her shoulder. The anchor head dragged a bright curve across the floor.

“FOCUS” Ludwig howled, immediately grounding her clearly hay-wiring thoughts, blame and self judgement could wait for after this fight. The command bit through the fog. Orders come like ropes when the mind is drowning. She caught hold of it with both hands.

He didn’t wait for her to fully wake up as he flew forward swinging hard with Durandal, yet the man simply parried and flicked and struck away at Ludwig’s weapon. The ring of metal settled into a pattern that did not favor him. Every beat of the exchange returned the same story. Angle correct, weight honest, outcome unchanged. The hooded thing read the blade as if it were a page and turned it with a finger.

Frustration grew in Ludwig’s heart. His swings became harder, heavier and more lethal, but even so, every swing and strike seemed to be parried even easier than before. Strength began to feed the enemy’s ease. The breath shortened by a measure the body did not grant permission for. The hand wanted to chase, and the chase is where mistakes are born.

“Calm down!” the Knight King said. “You’re being affected by this place! You’re not Undead right now!” The voice came to him like a knuckle rapped against a helm, sharp enough to return the world to its proper distance.

Almost immediately Ludwig stepped back. The heel found purchase. Durandal drew a shallow circle that did not invite a counter. The wrists reset. The tongue settled against the roof of the mouth to slow the heart. The amulet answered, cooling the line of the spine.

“Oh, not pushing it I see? Figured something out?” The hood tilted, amused. The stake in his left hand tapped once against the hammer head, a small patient rhythm that made mockery of the hammering that had come before.

Ludwig took a deep breath, “Emotion amplification… bad matchup.” The words were low and even, spoken more to bind thought than to explain. He watched the floor, the shoulders, the position of the wrists. He did not look at the plates again.

“Ah, quite the smart one, and yes indeed, humans after all… are quite simple and complicated at the same time. So easy to rile up,” he said as he finally brought the second chakram out, “But at the same time, so unpredictable.” The new blade kissed the first. The edges hummed where they touched. His arms opened as a dancer opens to the next figure.

Just then something flew past Ludwig’s face, a loud bang echoed, and Ludwig turned to see Misty’s anchor had barely blocked the weapon, only for a second one to strike at it slamming her and her anchor all the way to the ground at the other end of the room. The first chakram skidded along the anchor’s shank, throwing sparks like a small storm. The second arrived a heartbeat later and came down with a sound that made teeth ache. Misty’s feet left the floor. Stone dust blossomed where she landed.

“Wouldn’t it be better if it was just the two of us?” the man said as he opened his mouth, though he didn’t have a face, it felt like the swirl of blackness inside his hood moved and shaped itself to a circle of force. The next sound did not come from his throat. It came from the chamber itself, from the old seams in the stone, from the hollows where air rests between breaths. The language had no words and every meaning.

Words were uttered, words that didn’t have a source or origin, words that didn’t mean anything, but these spoken words moved the cave. The torches did not flicker, yet the light shifted as if it reconsidered what to illuminate.

The dead and dying monsters at the cave entrance began shaking and shuddering, as they began rising once again. This wasn’t a revival of Undeath, but puppetry as there was no command of Necros’s power here. It was magic, dark magic. The joints bent with a grinding that belonged to tools rather than bone. The heads lifted as if pulled up by threads tied to the crown. Mouths opened without breath. Limbs found the floor with insect care.

“They can handle her for a bit, so how about we talk, fellow brother?” He sounded pleased with his own generosity. He sounded as if this were the pause between movements and not the creation of a flank meant to cut the mind in half.

“I don’t like talking to creeps like you,” Ludwig said as he finally realized that the man had no weapons on him so he jumped at him. The empty hands were an invitation to overreach. And Ludwig wasn’t about to miss this opportunity.

“Duck!” the Knight King howled. The warning raked his ear. He obeyed before thought could argue.

Without even hesitating a second Ludwig canceled the attack and rolled forward. Air pressed hard along the nape as something cut the space where his neck had been. The roll ended with the heel set and the blade guarding low. He felt grit under the palm and pushed up to stand, his eyes locked onto the former servant of Necros.

The man in front of him laughed as in his two hands the same chakrams that he used to knock Misty away were in there, “Feels like you have eyes on the back of your head,” he laughed. The laugh had no warmth. It sounded like someone testing knives against a whetstone. “Then, how about we pick up the pace?” he said.

He then flicked both weapons, and instead of two chakrams… four manifested in his hands. They nested as coins do in a juggler’s fingers, edges kissing edges, then peeling apart with the indifference of mirrors turning.

“Just so you know, Titania was able to fight against sixteen of these, I hope you can entertain me as much,” the mad man laughed as the blades found their way through the air and toward Ludwig.

“Fuck…”