Deus Necros

They moved at dawn.

At least, Ludwig assumed it was dawn.

The sky had brightened by a shade, but calling it morning felt generous. There was no sunrise, no gold bleeding across the peaks, no warmth crawling over the ridges. The world simply changed from black-gray to gray-white, as if someone had lifted one dirty veil and revealed another underneath. Clouds dragged low over the mountains. Snow slid across the ground in thin, restless streams. The trail ahead continued north, cutting deeper beyond Solania’s final reach and into lands where maps became less confident.

Tull stared at the sky with open resentment.

"This is not morning," he said. "This is night pretending to be useful."

Redd adjusted the strap of his pack. "You slept."

"I slept badly."

"You complain better after rest."

"That is because I have more strength to express how miserable I am."

Thomas hovered near Ludwig’s shoulder, ember wings flickering softly. "I think the cold is getting worse."

Tull turned on him immediately. "Thank you, tiny flame. Very helpful."

"It’s fire spirit."

"I know what I said."

Celine walked past both of them. "Move."

Cain had already started ahead, his cloak dragging lightly over the snow without seeming to collect any of it. He did not look back to see if they followed. He simply assumed they would, which made it feel less like leadership and more like weather.

The others followed.

For the first several hours, the journey continued as before. Mountains rose around them in hard white slopes, broken by black stone and old ice. Sloth’s retreat trail remained visible, though less violently carved than before. The army had spread as it moved, then narrowed again through passes and old mountain paths. The corpses of the black army had thinned considerably. Where yesterday they had found clusters of abandoned bodies, now they spotted only one or two each hour, half-buried by snow, frozen in postures that made them look less dead than dismissed.

Discarded weight.

Cain’s phrase stayed with Ludwig.

It suited Sloth too well.

The dead things they passed barely drew comment anymore. Redd checked a few from a distance. Kaiser poked one until Tull threatened to confiscate his stick. Thomas refused to look too closely at anything with more than one mouth. Celine’s gaze remained fixed ahead, while Cain seemed to know where the trail bent before the trail itself admitted it.

Then the wind changed.

It did not stop.

That might have been normal.

It slowed.

The first sign was not relief, but wrongness. The freezing wind that had been cutting through the mountains all morning began to lose force, not because the terrain shielded them and not because the storm was ending. It simply became weaker. Lazier. The snow that had whipped sideways moments before now drifted in slower, softer lines, falling with the reluctance of something that had grown tired of its own nature.

Tull lifted his head.

"Finally," he said. "A blessing."

Ludwig frowned. "No."

Tull looked at him. "No?"

"No blessing."

Kaiser’s eyes narrowed with interest. "The wind is becoming sluggish."

"That is not a sentence I enjoy hearing," Redd said.

Celine looked toward the northern ridges. "Sloth?"

"Maybe," Ludwig said.

The air felt less cold, but not warmer. That was the strange part. The temperature had not risen. The bite remained when snow touched skin, and the ground was still frozen underfoot, yet the pressure of the weather had changed. It was as if the world had remembered wind required movement, and movement had begun to seem cumbersome.

Even the wind felt it was troublesome to be wind.

Tull’s earlier relief disappeared.

"I withdraw my appreciation."

"Wise," Kaiser said.

The terrain changed after that.

The group crossed one final slope of jagged stone and came down onto a long white path that stretched between low ridges. It was not a road in the proper sense, but it was too even to be entirely natural. Snow had packed hard across it, flattened by the passage of Sloth’s army until it resembled a frozen artery leading north. The climb eased. The mountain slopes no longer forced them upward. They moved straighter now, across snow-paved ground where visibility extended farther than before.

It should have made travel easier.

Somehow, that made it worse.

The hard ascent had at least felt honest. This path felt prepared.

Redd walked a few steps ahead, nose lifting occasionally. "Less blood."

"Fewer bodies too," Tull said.

"One or two an hour now," Ludwig said. "The weak fell behind earlier. Whatever made it this far either survived the retreat or was worth dragging."

Kaiser glanced at a frozen corpse half-sunk beside the path. "Or it became too boring to die."

Cain had been quiet for a long time.

Then, without warning, he drifted closer to Ludwig’s side.

"You have beaten Wrath before," Cain said.

Ludwig looked at him. "Yes."

"How did he compare to Sloth?"

The question drew attention from the rest of the group, even those pretending not to listen.

Ludwig kept walking for several steps before answering.

"Two different dogmas," he said. "Wrath was honest. Exhausting to fight, but honest."

Kaiser made a faint sound. "Exhausting, he says."

Ludwig ignored him, though technically Kaiser had a point. At the time, Ludwig had been fully undead and did not understand exhaustion the way living bodies did. Fighting for five years without rest had been absurd, but not impossible for what he was then. It had been pain, repetition, destruction, and endless pressure, but it was clear in its brutality.

"Wrath wanted to destroy," Ludwig continued. "He attacked. He crushed. He answered violence with greater violence. Fighting him for five years without rest was something I never expected, but it was still feasible because the path made sense. Survive, strike, endure, strike again. Repeat until something breaks."

"And Sloth?" Cain asked.

"This guy..." Ludwig’s mouth tightened. "A lot of tricks."

"That is one way of saying it," Celine murmured.

Ludwig nodded. "Sloth doesn’t feel like an enemy trying to beat you. He feels like the world trying to convince you that attacking is too much effort. That defending is too much effort. That breathing can wait. That standing can wait. That meaning itself can wait."

Tull’s aura shimmered faintly around his shoulders. "I hate that I understand what you mean."

Cain’s gaze stayed on Ludwig. "I heard that you can only hit it if you do not strike it."

"Something along those lines," Ludwig said. "You cannot target him. Anything that targets him fails to find the will to do so. Even thinking of harming him directly can make the assault moot. Your sword won’t slow because his body is tough. It slows because the action loses purpose before it arrives."

Cain’s eyes sharpened. "Interesting concept. Authority, I suppose."

Ludwig turned to him. "Yeah. You know anything about that?"

Cain did not answer with uncertainty.

"Yes," he said. "We also have Authority."

Ludwig slowed slightly.

Celine sighed.

That sigh made Ludwig more interested, not less.

"As in?" he asked.

"It is difficult to truly consider it Authority, Uncle," Celine said.

Cain looked at her. "It is Authority."

"It is not."

Ludwig looked between them.

"I’m getting confused. Do you have Authority or not?"

"Yes," Cain said.

"No," Celine said.

Ludwig stared at both of them like a disappointed father who had expected better from ancient blood-drinking creatures.

"That is just mind control," Celine said.

Ludwig blinked. "What is mind control? I’m losing information here."

"It is not as simple as that," Cain said.

"It is exactly as ugly as that," Celine replied.

"They are both right," Kaiser chimed in.

Everyone looked at him.

Even Redd, who had clearly been trying not to become fully invested in a conversation involving old vampire hierarchy, turned his head.

Kaiser looked delighted to have an audience.

"Authority," he said, lifting one finger, "is the conceptual manipulation of the world."

Ludwig stared at him.

"English?"

Kaiser’s expression twisted slightly. "What is English?"

"I meant, please explain."

Kaiser gave him a strange look, as if filing the word away for later theft, then continued. "It is forcing the world to accept the user’s will as Law. Not law written on paper. Law as in the way things are allowed to be. You have done it yourself with Pride’s Authority."

Ludwig’s expression shifted.

Kaiser said lightly. "You declared something, and the world accepted it. When Pride’s Authority says you are strong, the world does not treat that as opinion. It becomes a state. A truth. But the world is not charitable. If you force it to accept a law, it will make sure you pay the cost for breaking or going against that law."

Ludwig remembered the weight of Pride.

The completeness.

The terrifying certainty of words becoming structure.

"I said I was strong," Ludwig muttered.

"You did more than say it," Kaiser replied. "You forced existence to agree."

Thomas hovered lower. "That sounds... dangerous."

"It is."

Redd scratched his jaw. "And vampires can do that?"

"That is where this becomes annoying," Kaiser said.

Ludwig looked at Kaiser. "How does that translate to vampires having or not having Authority?"

"Vampires possess Pseudo Authority," Kaiser said. "Not all of them, mind you. Only the very, very strong."

His finger shifted toward Cain.

"Like this man, for example."

Tull looked at Cain, then back at Kaiser. "You added one too many verys there."

Kaiser turned toward him. "Who is the strongest person you know in the Empire?"

"Titania," Tull said without hesitation.

Redd looked at him. "I thought you’d say the Emperor, considering loyalty and all."

"Oh, he is strong," Tull said. "But she is a monster."

Kaiser nodded as if satisfied. "Good. Then let us use your scale. If you are one, Titania is ten, right?"

Tull thought for half a second. "Probably more like twenty."

"Fine. If you are one, Titania is twenty." Kaiser pointed at Cain. "Then Titania is basically one to his ten."

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