Deus Necros

Chapter 551: Mastery of Sword and Magic

Ludwig took a step back. With the reveal that Titania managed to survive up to sixteen chakrams to Ludwig that meant that the enemy in front of him hadn’t even started warming up. The number sat in the back of his head like a stone. Sixteen meant margin. Sixteen meant he had not yet been made to work. The wrists of the hooded thing were loose. The feet had not once needed to adjust. Ludwig measured the space, the nailed bodies, the plates of eyes and tongues, and felt the fight begin to change shape behind his ribs.

And the pace was about to start ramping up.

“Vengeance.” Ludwig called, and his body burnt bright red, a magical aura that increased his reflexes, damage and speed. Heat climbed the forearms and braided with the breath. The world tilted forward by a finger’s width. The edges of the enemy’s rings grew cleaner. The hum of the chains beneath his sleeve settled into a pleasant pressure against the bones.

“Ah magic? I see this should be entertaining,” the servant spoke as he flicked the two chakrams in his right hand toward Ludwig. The motion was almost idle. A card turned at a table. The rings left his fingers in a matched arc that promised two different deaths at two different heights.

The first came like a speed train, weight and speed as it clashed against Ludwig’s sword, yet, for the now grounded Ludwig, and more focused, he struck up with the tip of Durandal, at the edge of the first chakram, forcing the object to fly off course and slam into a nearby wall.

“No.” Misty howled as she saw the deflection, fearing that Ludwig would do the same as she did. The guilt was still eating away at her. Her hands pulled tight on the chain for a useless second as if she could rope the future back toward safety.

A quick glance toward where the chakram had landed, and Ludwig couldn’t help but gulp down, it actually landed right next to Titania’s neck, cutting some of her hair in the process. The unconscious woman, missing both her eyes and tongue couldn’t even react. A white curl slid down her shoulder and caught on the nail that pinned her wrist. The sight threatened to pull breath from his mouth. He made the breath go where it should.

“You should pay attention,” the servant said, and since he threw two of those things, the second one had already reached Ludwig’s chest. It came low on the return, trying to cut the breath loose before the lungs could answer.

With nothing but sheer grit and willpower, Ludwig’s left hand rose up. Any other man would have had his arm split in half if he were to meet the sharp circular blade with his own flesh and bone. Yet the weapon struck steel, sparking flashes from Ludwig’s raised forearm. The sparks crawled along the cuff and died in the weave of the sleeve.

From underneath his regalia’s sleeve, the Soul Chains had been wrapped under. Links hummed as if pleased to be remembered. The metal took the ring’s hunger and gave back only a dull ache in the ulna.

“No wonder Crucendo was prissy, you stole his Soul Chains,” the Former Servant said. “I wonder, would he attend one of my galleries if I were to give it back to him.” His voice turned soft over the word galleries. He tasted it.

“Over my dead body.”

“And you think you can survive long enough?” the man laughed and threw the other two chakrams. The air ahead of them parted with a whisper. The rings came in a crossing pattern meant to make the mind choose a single future and lose to both.

This time, Ludwig used his head, if he were to fight and parry with his weapon, he couldn’t predict fully where the chakrams would land. And they might end up killing more of the hostages. So, he flicked his weapon, turning Durandal from its long blade form, to a curved one handed scythe. The click at the hilt was small and precise. The weight shifted forward into the hook. The balance changed from line to circle.

The incoming chakram found no purchase as Ludwig struck it from under, the blade went into the hole in one swing of the scythe, stopping its momentum. The ring buzzed like a trapped wasp. The vibration traveled up the scythe and into the forearm and rattled the teeth. He set the shoulder and let it burn out.

The man raised his hand and the blade tried to go back to him, but Ludwig didn’t allow it as he struck his scythe into the ground. The chakram was stuck and unable to escape no matter how hard the pull was. The haft bit into the stone with a sound like ice cracking. The pull on the ring warped the air above the floor for a heartbeat and then stilled.

“Well, seems like the two of us are weaponless now,” the former servant laughed. After all, Ludwig only stopped one blade, there were way more of them hidden somewhere on that man’s skinny body. The hooded shape tilted as if listening to a private applause.

He raised his other hand and the rest of the chakrams flew back to his hand, three this time. They came to him like trained hawks.

“Or is it just you who is weaponless?” he laughed.

“This is getting on my nerves,” Ludwig said as he let go of the scythe and left it imbedded on the ground. The decision felt clean. The floor would hold it. The ring would not leave without help.

He flicked his ring once, and a staff manifested in it. The jewel at its crown drank the dim and gave it back in a cold pulse. The wood hummed low along the grain. The memory of deserts and graveside wind rose from it like old incense.

Immediately the atmosphere shifted, it wasn’t the jeweled staff’s doing, but the feeling of the man in front of Ludwig. The hood angled a fraction. The fingers stilled on the ring. The voice that came next had a thread of something that did not belong to delight.

“You… where did you get that?”

“You’d like to know now, wouldn’t you?” Ludwig smiled as he struck the bottom of the staff on the ground. “Galvanize.” Ludwig muttered and his body was encased in a blue aura, mixing with the red one of Vengeance it turned violet. The skin prickled where the two currents met. The joints oiled themselves with power. Sight sharpened to a narrow bright.

He took a deep breath and said, “How about we switch things up.” The staff felt right at the hip. The next tap would come easy.

“You think magic can save you?”

The man laughed and flicked the three blades in his one hand, turning them to six. The multiplication was lazy and precise, the way a hand finds a second coin in a pocket it has visited a hundred times.

“Try it.” he howled as he threw the six whirling weapons at Ludwig. Six different heights. Six different timing windows. The throw designed to harvest panic.

Ludwig raised the staff once again and tapped it on the ground. “Black Mirror.” Immediately a wall of pure black appeared in front of Ludwig, which absorbed all six whirling blades. The surface was not glass. It was absence, as if the room had been folded and the crease held. The rings met it without a sound, vanished, and left behind a small ache in the teeth as if a storm had stepped on the threshold and decided to wait.

The man immediately turned behind him seeing nothing. Only to be struck from above by his own weapons. Dust and debris rose up. Along with the shaking of the whole cave. The ceiling gave a short roar. Grit washed over the plates like sudden rain. The nailed bodies swayed a little on their iron.

Misty who finally seemed to have gotten a breath after beating so many of those horrid many armed and limbed creatures, asked Ludwig, “You got him?” The chain at her wrist hung slack for a beat. Her eyes were wide and hot with hope and fear pressed together.

Ludwig couldn’t help but crumple his nose, “You shouldn’t have said that,” Ludwig said as immediately two chakrams flew his way. They came out of the falling dust like thoughts one forgets to guard. Without hesitating he ducked under them, but the blades were going toward Titania and the unfortunate people captured on the walls. The angles were chosen with cruelty.

Ludwig grounded his teeth as he let out a frustrated tongue click. “Graviol.” he howled as he cast the orb of weight and gravity toward the chakrams. The air thickened where the staff pointed. A dark pearl swelled in front of the rings and burst like heavy rain poured sideways.

The sticky weight increasing magic didn’t let go of the blades as it stuck to them, slowing them immensely and dropping them immediately onto the ground, unable to reach their destination. The rings hit the floor with a thick sound. Stone powdered around them. Titania’s cut hair strand trembled and lay still.

The reason why Ludwig clicked his tongue wasn’t because he had to stop the blades from killing some of the hostages, but because he knew that the moment he tried to do so, three more blades would be coming his way. Timing writes its own traps. He stepped into the next breath with his knees already bent.

So without even looking back, Ludwig flung his body up. And true to his intuition, three more blades flew right where he was. The wind of their passage skinned the soles of his boots. He landed against the side wall, staff low, Durandal’s scythe still singing softly where it pinned the first ring to the floor.

“Come back.” the man howled as the six blades tried to go back. The pull tugged at the Graviol fields and made the air groan like a ship in a slow turn.

Ludwig cast once again. “Graviol.” three more times, once on each of the blades. Making them all drop to the ground. The weight pearls splashed against steel and grew like tar. The rings ground a path an arm’s length long and stopped. The floor looked as if someone had dragged millstones across wet clay.

“Frustrating, dealing with mages…” the man said. “You should be easy to kill really, most mages have no defenses, but you, a fraud, trying to pursue both paths… frustrating.” He heard from within the still settling dust. The voice thinned for a breath, then found its amusement again. Stones clicked as something rearranged behind the veil.

“Quite a shame that I’m a fraud for you isn’t it. Can’t beat me with your swordsmanship, if that’s what you can call it, and can’t handle my magic. But really? Who is the fraud among us? Unlike you, I can fight in any terrain, while you’re unable to do anything without hiding behind magic that disturb emotion and holy magic.” The words steadied his hands. He let them do their small work and then set them aside. Pride is a poor shield. He kept the staff between his heart and the voice.

“So much yapping.” the man said as he emerged fully from the dust that had risen earlier. The hood was the same shape. The body beneath it was not. The cloth stretched and then found new ways to hang.

The man now, seemed to have changed a bit. From within his ribs and his back, something new began bulging out, warping and wrapping, then tearing out. The sound was wet and threaded with little pops that belonged in kitchens and not in caves.

Arms. More arms. The skin along the flanks split in clean seams as if a tailor had marked the lines in advance. Bones slid outward like tools taken from a case. Hands opened and closed with infant curiosity, then learned how to hold a blade in the space of a breath.

Three arms added to each of his sides. The silhouette widened until the hood looked too small for the body. The wrists spun once as if remembering dances learned long ago.

“Fine, then,” he said as he flicked his hand, and in each one of them, a chakram appeared. Then he flicked them again, and each one of his eight arms had two chakrams now. The rings nested like scales. The edges caught the moonlight from the broken roof and sent it back in thin cruel crescents. “Let’s see what you can do against this.” The air around him rippled with the promise of motion. The nailed bodies began to tremble as the pressure in the room changed.

Ludwig set the staff heel with care. He mapped the hostages a second time. He counted how many rings could be caught by weight and how many by angle. He felt Misty to his left rise to both feet and pull the chain through her palm until it sang. The amulet cooled his throat. Vengeance burned violet. The staff hummed for the next command. He drew a breath and leaned into the storm that was about to break.