Deus Necros
Chapter 333 - 333: A Conversation

"Well," said a small voice near Ludwig's shoulder. The Knight King's flickering form hovered there, eyes narrowed. "At least now you know how she cut off both your arms."

Ludwig gritted his teeth. "As much as it is impressive that you're this strong," he said, pushing himself back to his feet, "we still need to leave."

But the vampire didn't move.

She was focused now, gaze locked on something beyond the Queen. She wasn't ignoring him out of contempt. She was looking for something.

"Ludwig," Thomas's voice came from the spectral space near his ear, "I think I know what's going on."

Ludwig reached down, grabbing Oathcarver from the broken stones, his eyes still fixed on the Queen. "Would be a great time to explain."

"You remember that time I saw the Wrath Core in the chest of the werewolf you killed at Bastos Manor?"

"Yes. How is that relevant?"

"I can see it in her. It's no longer a core. It's part of her."

Ludwig tightened his grip. "Tell me something I don't know."

"No, I mean… it's still acting as an anchor, just like before. It should be linked to the Queen. There should be a connection. A thread of some sort. Back then, it looked like a red line."

"And now?" Ludwig asked.

"There is a red line. But it's not going toward the Queen. It's going down. Directly beneath where that platform was."

Ludwig's breath caught.

"So all of this…"

"Is just a husk," Thomas said.

"You finally have eyes you can use," the Knight King added with a sigh.

"How do we get there?"

"It's not far," Thomas replied. "The Queen did most of the digging. It's maybe a meter beneath her."

"Great," Ludwig said. "So we just have to move her."

The Queen began singing.

The chamber roared with the return of her voice, and the walls vomited forth dozens, then hundreds of Perturbants. Roots cracked open like jaws, and the creatures began pouring through.

Ludwig sighed.

"Guess it's time to start summoning some undead."

He raised his hand, preparing the incantation, palm ready to strike the ground.

[You have been spotted. Survival Quest has failed.]

The notification froze him.

"Huh?"

And then the cave erupted.

A figure moved. A blur. A living comet of fur and fang that flashed through the space with such speed the air cracked behind it. It was enormous, nearly half the Queen's size, and as it passed, the stone itself bent inward. A wide jaw curled open into a devilish grin as the figure leapt, one hand catching the Queen's head, its momentum twisting its entire frame in a single, clean arc.

The Queen's body recoiled.

And then her head was twisted out of her shoulders.

Roots and vines spewed from the open neck like writhing hair, and the head, still animate, turned in mid-air as if trying to scream.

The figure landed before Ludwig.

In its right hand, it held the Queen's head.

Still moving.

Still breathing.

The cave went still in the wake of the creature. The perturbants suddenly stopped moving, and the Queen's body collapsed with a sound like a forest falling. Roots snapped, vines shuddered, and her body twisted on itself like a dying bloom, her limbs folding back inward in spasmodic flinches. Where her head had once been, only a gaping tangle of tendrils remained, spilling down from the torn neck like nerve-threaded roots in search of something to anchor to.

He dropped down in front of Ludwig without a word, the massive weight of his body compressing the stone beneath him. His frame was thick with wiry muscle, pelt glistening with sweat and viscera, and his grin wide, lupine, and deeply wrong. It showed too many teeth to belong to anything human. He didn't speak at first. He just stared, nostrils flaring slightly as he sniffed the air around Ludwig with deliberate care, as if testing the scent for memory.

"Ah," the creature finally murmured, his voice low and rough as gravel dragged through mud. "It is you from that time, at the apothecary. You're the little bastard that killed my first sired."

Ludwig did not move. There was no place for fear in him now, not in this body, not in this moment. What little instinct remained to flinch had been dulled by Undeath. He met the beast's eyes without a word, jaw firm, breath held steady. The werewolf took another step forward, exhaling through his nose in a long, forceful breath. Ludwig's coat rippled at the gust, and the beast's snout dipped again, pulling in more of the air between them.

"You smell of vampires," it said. "And undeath."

A sound behind Ludwig caused them both to pause, the vampire. She hissed, low and sharp, more reflex than challenge. The Apostle turned toward her slowly, his neck tilting with the fluid precision of a predator remembering the shape of prey.

"You," he said again, tone darkening. His eyes narrowed as he sniffed once more, longer this time. "You also smell of that family… No." He paused, and a grin stretched across his face. "You. I know you. Lady Bastos."

Ludwig felt a flicker in his chest. The name landed with weight. He said nothing. The beast's gaze slid back to him, more amused now, as if savoring the silence. He reached forward and with one clawed finger lifted the flap of Ludwig's regalia, revealing the small, softly glowing lantern clipped at his side.

"Ah," the werewolf chuckled. "Necros still clings to his delusions. Still hoping to kill the Usurpers. Still playing with corpses and calling it legacy. Give it up, boy. You're in far too deep."

A pulse of magic rang against Ludwig's senses. A message flared before his vision like a cold iron bell struck in the dark.

[DO NOT LISTEN TO THE Fanged Treacherous Apostle!]

The creature tilted his head at the flicker of power, the grin never fading.

"Seems the old man's whispering to you directly now. That's cute. Quite different from how we received our revelations" He leaned in slightly. "Tell me, why so quiet? Wolf got your tongue?"

Ludwig exhaled. The tension in his shoulders did not loosen, but he remained still, sword lowered at his side. "What is there to talk about?"

"Oh, plenty," the Apostle said, lips curling back over his teeth. His throat bulged for a moment, and with a grotesque choking sound he bent forward. From the pit of his gullet came something solid and wet, which clattered onto the floor in front of Ludwig with a dull metallic knock.

Another lantern. Identical in shape and size to Ludwig's, but dim, lifeless…no, Soulless.

Ludwig didn't flinch. Not even when the creature's grotesquely long arm reached out, its clawed knuckle tapping gently against the side of his own lantern.

"You feel it, don't you?" the Apostle whispered. "How it wants to control. How it pulses. Still bound to that old fool's will."

Ludwig held his breath. Not out of fear, but from the sheer wrongness of the space now curdling around them. The very air had shifted. Thicker, slower. Like wading into spoiled milk.

"As for you," he said to the vampire, "How strange, all of your family members should be dead but one, one I myself allowed to live thanks to a favor. Though I doubt that his life could have been called living by any means, yet you… you somehow I couldn't find on that night…isn't that right, Young Miss Celine?"

Ludwig's eyes twitched, finally the vampire had a name, and it was heavy, too heavy was the name.

The vampire's hiss sharpened, but this time, her frame trembled. It wasn't a threat. It was a crack. Something deep inside her flinched, a twitch behind the eyes that didn't fully know what it was reacting to. Not thought. Not memory. Just the ghost of something buried too deep to rot.

Ludwig raised Oathcarver. The weight of the blade felt heavier in his hands than usual, not from fatigue, but from something deeper that he didn't care to name. He took a slow step forward, meeting the Apostle's gaze with steady eyes.

"You know what the lantern does I suppose, so what's the reason for coming here? Wouldn't it be futile?" Ludwig said, voice firm. "You betrayed Necros's pledge, and became a servant to the Usurpers, you gave up a great power for something... shallow like immortality."

"You are mistaken, we were all mortals, all the Apostles before you, though we wouldn't simply perish due to the lanterns, we still would grow old… you're different, you're dead already. What lies did he promise you? Perhaps revival? Hah, you'll never draw human breath, after all, Necros is too greedy for a soul he once claimed to give back to life."

Ludwig hesitated, and it was visible in his uncertainty on how to answer. Could what the werewolf be saying true? Would Necros keep his promise to send him back? To give him real flesh, and real breath?

The Apostle noticed the uncertainty and without missing a beat, "You are just his latest project. Another lamb, only you're wrapped in a cloak of bone and rotting flesh. But you'll come around. They all do. Right before the light dies in their eyes."

The vampire's growl came again, but quieter. Her shoulders tensed. Her fingers curled. Not to strike, but to steady herself. A flicker moved behind her expression, not rage, not defiance, but the ache of something breaking open inside her.

The Fanged Apostle's eyes gleamed.

"Let me tell you a secret, boy," he said, voice low. "Necros doesn't send saviors. He breeds failures. And you, are already halfway broken."

"You don't know anything about me," Ludwig said.

"But I do, after all, aren't we both the same?" the werewolf grinned wide.