Deus Necros

Ludwig staggered one step, and his boot shattered the ground beneath it. His fingers twitched before lengthening around Nightbreaker’s handle. The bones inside his hands expanded, his palms broadened, and his knuckles grew until the enormous mace began to look properly proportioned within his grip.

Nightbreaker responded to the change.

The dark metal hummed as a red glow pulsed through the weapon. Wrath remembered Nightbreaker, and Nightbreaker remembered Wrath.

Ludwig’s forearm split open. Blood should have poured from the wound, but new flesh pushed through it instead. His arm thickened, and the tear sealed, only for another to open across his shoulder. More appeared over his chest and down his back.

Each wound existed only because the body growing beneath them was expanding faster than the old flesh could accommodate. Every split revealed more muscle, heavier bone and thick crimson energy before the Living Vessel sealed itself again.

Ludwig took another step.

The earth cratered beneath his foot.

Far away, Tull stopped retreating and stared back at him. "What the fuck?"

Kaiser immediately struck the back of Tull’s leg with his staff. "Keep moving."

"I’m looking."

"You may look from farther away."

Tull did not argue.

Cain had stopped as well. Celine remained in his arms, but her eyes had opened and were fixed upon Ludwig.

Noctivex moved across her body.

The living armor tightened, though not because danger was approaching her. This was recognition. The metal knew what it was seeing.

Celine felt the reaction and looked down. "Noctivex?"

The armor shuddered.

Cain glanced toward her. "What?"

Celine did not answer. She continued watching as something that had once belonged to Morde’Xander returned to the world.

Ludwig’s height increased. His legs lengthened, his torso widened, and bone after bone shifted inside him. Every adjustment produced another violent crack as his body grew until he towered above the battlefield, rising closer and closer to the size of the pale giant waiting before him.

Two protrusions formed beneath the skin of Ludwig’s forehead and pushed outward. His skin split, allowing massive horns to emerge. They grew from the front of his skull, dark at their bases and crimson toward their edges, curving upward as more bone formed beneath them.

His eyes changed next.

The whites vanished, followed by the irises, until crimson swallowed everything. His mouth opened as fangs pushed from his gums, longer and heavier than any human teeth should have been.

His face remained recognizable.

Barely.

Thin crimson veins spread from his chest and crawled over his shoulders. They traveled down his arms, circled his throat and reached across his face. Black followed between them, twisting together like vines growing beneath his skin.

Red and black.

Wrath.

The aura surrounding Ludwig thickened until the canyon itself began responding. Small stones rose from the ground, not because Ludwig deliberately lifted them, but because the pressure around his body refused to allow anything nearby to remain undisturbed.

Thomas stared back at the transformation. "Oh."

Kaiser continued retreating, and Thomas hurried after him.

"That’s bigger than Celine’s."

"No shit," Tull replied.

"That wasn’t what I meant."

"I know."

Gale looked back only once. The Death Knight’s grip tightened around his shield as something old passed through his stance.

Recognition, perhaps.

He had seen Wrath before. Not Ludwig borrowing its strength or controlling the Heart and directing its power toward an enemy.

Wrath itself.

"Move faster," Gale said.

That was enough to silence everyone.

Ludwig heard none of them.

Or perhaps he heard all of them.

That was the problem.

The voices had begun, though they did not come from outside or whisper into his ears. They existed within every thought, speaking over one another until language became little more than a demand.

Break. Kill. Destroy. Ruin. Crush. Burn. Tear.

The stone beneath him became offensive because it resisted his weight. The air was offensive because it touched his skin, and the canyon walls were offensive because they continued standing. The mountains upon the horizon offended him because their peaks dared to rise above the land surrounding them.

The creatures hiding in the fissures were offensive because they breathed. The sky was offensive because it remained whole.

The world itself became unbearable because too much of it still existed.

Every intact thing demanded correction.

And correction meant destruction.

Ludwig’s last coherent thoughts attempted to force boundaries around the rage.

Sloth.

Fight Sloth.

Do not look behind.

Do not chase the others.

The commands survived for several seconds before even they began losing meaning. Choosing Sloth as the enemy implied that the others were not, and Wrath refused to accept that distinction.

There were no allies or enemies. There were only things that remained intact and those needed to be corrected.

The Wrathful Heart beat again.

BOOM.

A shock wave erupted from Ludwig and peeled the canyon floor away in a widening ring. His body reached its final height, leaving him nearly equal to Sloth.

Nightbreaker rested in one hand. The mace that normally appeared oversized within Ludwig’s grasp now looked perfectly suited to him. His arm hung at his side, his head lowered, while the enormous horns cast shadows across what remained of his face.

For the first time since Ludwig had allowed the transformation to begin, Sloth moved without being attacked.

One foot slid backward.

It was barely half a step, but it happened.

Wrath noticed.

Ludwig’s head rose, and pure red eyes locked onto the pale figure before him.

Sloth looked into them and found no trace of Ludwig waiting behind the rage. There was no strategy, no clever understanding of Authority and no attempt to exploit a loophole. There was no concern for whether the coming strike was direct or indirect, nor any desire to kill Sloth specifically.

That distinction had ceased to exist.

Sloth was simply something that remained standing.

Wrath hated that.

"Brother, you should have remained dead..." Sloth said quietly.

Nightbreaker moved.

Ludwig disappeared.

There was no magic or teleportation. The ground beneath him simply ceased to exist beneath the force of his first step. An entire section of the canyon collapsed into a crater as Ludwig launched himself forward.

Sloth moved faster than he ever had against Celine and raised one arm to redirect Nightbreaker.

The mace did not slow.

There was no purpose for Sloth’s Authority to dull, no chosen target whose importance could be burdened and no single act of violence that could forget why it existed.

Wrath did not need a reason.

Nightbreaker descended.

Sloth dodged, and the mace missed him.

It struck the canyon.

The world broke.

Stone exploded upward for hundreds of meters. The earth split beneath Sloth’s feet, opening into a jagged wound that raced through the canyon and continued toward the horizon.

The impact alone caught Sloth and launched him sideways.

Wrath turned.

Sloth had barely touched the ground before a massive hand closed around his ankle. For the first time, Ludwig deliberately touched him. Or better yet, Wrath has touched him.

The Authority did nothing.

Wrath pulled, lifting Sloth from the earth before slamming him into the opposite side of the canyon.

The first impact collapsed the wall.

Ludwig pulled him free and struck the next formation hard enough to shatter it.

He swung a third time, but there was no wall left.

Sloth twisted within Ludwig’s grasp and drove one fist into his chest. The blow sank deep, shattering Ludwig’s sternum and exploding his ribs inward. Sloth’s fist nearly passed through him.

Wrath did not defend.

Ludwig did not even look at the wound.

Nightbreaker swung from the side. Sloth raised an arm to block, and the mace connected.

The limb folded. Bone erupted through white flesh, and Sloth flew across the canyon.

Ludwig’s chest reconstructed while he moved after him. Bones snapped back into place, flesh sealed around them, and the crater left by Sloth’s fist vanished beneath layers of newly formed muscle before he had even taken his next step.

Sloth landed several hundred meters away with his arm already healing.

Ludwig came again.

The pale giant stared at the creature approaching him and understood that this was nothing like fighting Celine.

Celine had possessed Wrath.

This was not possession.

This was succession.

A body built from death carried the Heart taken from the former Wrathful Death. It wielded a weapon that remembered the hands of rage, and it inhabited a vessel incapable of exhaustion.

Sloth raised both arms.

Ludwig slammed down. The first fist connected, and the entire canyon shook.

Sloth retaliated, breaking half of Ludwig’s face with a single punch.

Ludwig answered harder. Tearing away Sloth’s arm from its socket.

Far behind them, every member of Ludwig’s group continued running as the continent began to tremble beneath the collision of two Authorities.

Sloth against Wrath.

Stillness against rage.

A being that wanted nothing against a being that wanted only one thing.

Destruction unchained.

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