Deus Necros

Hearing Ludwig, and seeing his expression the Queen roared out as she tried to slam herself against the walls to get him off.

“Stop wriggling, you oversized maggot!” he barked, pressing his torso against her slick hide, not from desperation but to reduce surface area. With his free hand, he called forth Durandal, its weight familiar, welcome. He flicked it, which twisted it once and shifted it into the one-handed scythe form. The blade hissed through air, then bit down into the Queen’s flesh. He stabbed it in deep, forcing a screech from the Queen.

“Now you’re going nowhere.” His voice came in a growl, low and cutting.

He began to move. One stab at a time. Digging his weapon in, using the blade like a mountaineer’s axe. His body dragged upward inch by inch, the tip of Durandal finding purchase again and again in the Queen’s thick outer hide. And with each foot gained, her posture dipped further into disarray.

Ahead, her face twisted, not in triumph, but unease. For once, she did not howl. Her eyes, if they could be called that, rolled back toward the creature clinging to her spine like a parasite. She was… afraid? No. Not quite. But something close. A flicker of recognition. A primal understanding that death had been invited to a place never meant for it.

Then she screamed.

Not as an animal. But as a mother denied. And the denier was an undead, she wished to give birth to life, but what is clinging to her was the very presence of Necros. His servant and Apostle. She feared not for her life, but for what she bore, like a mother, a mother who would do anything she needs to and have to for her child, even if it meant challenging Necros himself.

Her clawing speed reached a new limit as she accelerated further and faster ahead.

It was to the point that Ludwig was barely able to gain any footing on her back anymore.

And then the tunnel widened. She had reached the mouth.

And as she burst through, the world changed again.

The air changed. Not colder. Not warmer. But thinner. Like altitude without sky. Like prayer without gods. The ceiling above vanished into a lattice of bone and crystal, translucent ribs of extinct creatures forming an archway that stretched beyond the torchlight of any holy fire. And was lit by a red bloody moon. It was a cave exit that opened up on a shore. This was the other side of the Dawn Island, an open sea cave with its own sands and its own sea water. A shore, or what remained of one. Bone-ash, flat, pale, like snow beneath moonlight, but dead. A beach sculpted by millennia of charred marrow.

She exploded out of the cave, landing in a squirming protective and coiled manner around the cocoon, while from the sheer force Ludwig was wrenched off and thrown all the way to the other side.

The bone ash crunched beneath his boots with a brittle, hollow texture, the kind that suggested it had once held life. It gave way under his weight like snow packed over shattered shells, releasing the faint scent of marrow and minerals that had not touched the sky in centuries. Every step sent small plumes of white powder into the air, catching the crimson light of the moon and turning to ghostly mist. The silence that followed the Queen’s crash was not true silence, it was the breath before a scream, the pause before an altar’s knife descended.

The Queen was already shifting again. Uncoiled from her protective form to a more offensive and defensive stance. She didn’t move forward, but downward. Her roots drove into the ashen ground like stakes, anchoring her swollen form as if she intended to give birth to the sea itself. Her bark split further at the torso, cracking with a sound like lightning caught underwater. The cocoon between her ribs expanded now in earnest, its surface stretching taut like overfilled silk. Ludwig could see the membrane quiver, contracting and releasing in uneven rhythms, as if breathing from both ends. The veins pulsed faster, no longer slow and deliberate, but frantic, panicked, even.

Celine’s body had stopped moving.

She hung suspended inside the blooming sac, her limbs limp, her skin a pale shimmer under the blood-moon light. The threads holding her were no longer just roots, but filaments that pulsed in sync with the Queen’s heartbeat. They were drinking from her. Not blood. Not flesh. But something deeper, identity, perhaps. And at the same time giving her something else in exchange, something that would change who she is.

Her spine arched once, convulsively, and from her lips came a soft exhalation. It didn’t belong to her. It was too measured, too slow. Like a whisper breathed by something inside her.

Ludwig tightened his grip around Oathcarver’s hilt. His boots sank slightly in the ash with every step, dragging resistance like mud clinging to a grave. The beach was wide, deceptively flat, but it felt like walking into a mouth. The further he advanced, the quieter the world became. No insects. No wind. Only the rasp of the Queen’s breath and the low murmur of roots expanding beneath the surface.

Then, the cocoon pulsed once, violently.

It let out a deep, wet sound, like lungs filled with syrup trying to exhale. A thin tear split across its lower edge, and beneath it, the Queen lowered her arms in reverence. Her entire body began to lean forward, like a priestess bowing before a god unborn. Her mouth opened, not to scream this time, but to moan, a long, guttural sound, part agony, part triumph. It vibrated through the sand, through the cavern walls, through Ludwig’s boots and up his spine, making the marrow in his bones ache. The very air tasted wrong. Like wet iron and stagnant sap.

Celine’s body twitched again.

This time, it was not a spasm. Her fingers curled. One hand flexed, as if reaching for something. Her chin dipped forward, just slightly, and then snapped upright. Her eyes flared open, and the sight of them forced Ludwig to stop mid-step.

One eye was hers, still pale, still unyielding, but the other,

The other was a living wound. Red not with color but with memory. It glowed faintly, not with light, but with emotion. Wrath. Pure, distilled hatred, coiled into a shape that resembled an iris. It didn’t look at Ludwig. It didn’t see him. It gazed past him, into the depths of the beach, into the bones of the island. And it smiled.

Only for a second. A twitch at the corner of her lips. But it was there.

“No,” Ludwig murmured. The word was not a denial. It was recognition. A whisper of the inevitable catching up.

The Queen turned fully now, not with a movement of the neck, but as though the entire landscape were shifting to face him. Her entire form reoriented, petals of bark and skin folding inward to reveal the trembling cavity beneath. The cocoon yawned wider. And in that moment Ludwig knew it. Once the Queen was done transferring whatever she had to Celine… she’ll become something else.

Inside, behind the translucent wall of veins and sap, a shape began to form. It was not yet flesh. Not yet solid. But it was coalescing. Drawing from the cocoon. From the Queen herself, From the blood of the Order. From the death in the soil. And funneled toward Celine.

Ludwig moved again.

Faster.

His legs screamed with effort. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint. He didn’t notice the world. Only the path between him and the Queen. And still, the cocoon pulsed. Still, the Queen chanted silently, her mouth open to the sky that was not sky, the moon overhead bleeding color into everything below.

Behind Ludwig, the sea hissed.

Waves touched the bone shore, then pulled back. No wind stirred. No birds cried. But something was approaching. He could feel it. The island was listening now. Watching.

And somewhere deep inside his hollow chest, Ludwig understood.

If he did not reach Celine in time, the thing she carried, the thing growing inside her, would never be unborn. And, he felt it, he knew it. And he didn’t want to see it happen, because if he failed, and didn’t make it in time, Celine will be lost forever.

He screamed.

And the run became a charge.

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