Deus Necros - Chapter 548: Quenching
Chapter 548: Quenching
Ludwig moved forward leaving misty admiring her weapon, “The chain also is a good help for climbing on top of giants or binding someone too big for a normal rope.” Ludwig said. He pictured the bite of metal into thick hide and the surety of a chain that did not burn through like hemp did.
“Ah I never thought of that application, I have to note it down,” she replied as she held her anchor over her shoulder while her massive suitcase simply warped around itself transforming to a small tattoo on her right hand wrist. The ink shimmered once and lay quiet, the shape of a clasp, neat and proud.
The two of them continued heading forward, walking on top of hard square stone, where several small statues of creatures like beetles, scorpions and snakes were placed neatly every ten or so paces. Their shells had been carved with mathematical patience, each plate and ridge correct, as if the sculptor loved the order of small lives. The beetles faced inward. The scorpions faced outward. The snakes lay in rings that suggested eyes. The walls themselves had several carvings and drawings, ancient writing telling stories and feats, perhaps more. Moon boats, processions, men with jackal heads offering bowls to a woman who was a crescent and a face. Though most of the carvings had been corroded away by the endless stream of time, they still held the history of an ancient people. The air had the faint metallic scent of old offerings. A cold draft moved once along their ankles, curious and gone.
Ludwig couldn’t admire them more, as he had to focus on going forward, and the more he went ahead, the more the occasional vibrations sounded. Closer and more rhythmical, a fight perhaps? Or maybe something else. The beats were too clean for the stumble of battle. There was no scuff. There was no curse. There was the patient cadence of making. Heat rode the faint currents ahead in breaths, warm and cool like a sleeping thing.
Not long after they arrived to a large square room with an opened ceiling. The ceiling itself revealed the moonlight as it shined down upon the room, making it bright enough to see everything in the viscinity, including the clear trace of blood stains on the ground. The light fell straight and white, a pillar without weight that made the motes hang like silver dust. The floor had drunk the blood but not yet finished the work. It glistened in places where it was thick. In others it had turned to a dark matte that would be brown in day. Footprints ran in and then away, then dragged, then stopped. The smell found the back of the tongue, iron and a little sweet.
Fresh, metal tasting blood stains. In the middle of the room, a statue of what looked like a man in cloth, but had the face of a crow. A long beaked crow. While its back had raven wings. The statue itself was being washed with moonlight, and from the look of the blood trails, they went behind the statue. The beak pointed slightly downward, as if listening to something at the base of the plinth. The hands held nothing, which meant once they had held something important. The wings were not flared to threaten. They were folded like a scholar’s cloak.
“There should be a passage leading somewhere behind the statue.” Ludwig said. His voice ran soft in the big room and came back smaller.
Misty noticed the blood trails and agreed. She lifted the chain a little to keep it from ringing against the tiles and moved with the care of someone stepping through a sickroom. Her eyes did the counting for both of them. Smears. Drips. The width of a boot. The width of something dragged with both hands.
The two of them went to check behind the statue and as they had guessed it, there was an opened pathway, only this one led not to an organized hallway, but what looked like a dug tunnel in the ground. The edges were rough and fresh, gouged by tools that cared more for speed than beauty. Sand had been fused into a hard throat by pressure and heat. It breathed a dull warmth on their faces.
Which was impressive as this whole area was nothing but sand. So digging all the way to reach dirt is already a feat. The tunnel walls bore scratches in arcs that told of many hands. The ceiling was supported by ribs of petrified wood fitted fast and crude. Someone had known the pace of collapse and had raced it.
Walking forward, and through the tunnel, the blood stains grew more and more, and so did the echo of vibrations and soon the sound of steel clashing against steel. The rhythm took on shape now. It was a heartbeat that belonged to iron, not to flesh.
Or what felt like it, there was no groan or grunt nor any loud noise which usually accompanied a fight with swords, nothing but the constant beating of steel against steel, as if someone was hammering down a piping hot piece of metal. The air tasted faintly of quenched alloy and charcoal, though there was no smoke. Heat lay in layers across their cheeks as if the tunnel wore clothes.
Ludwig raised his finger and placed it on his mouth. Signaling for Misty to be as quiet as possible. He lowered his sword a finger’s width. Making sure that it didn’t reflect any light wantonly.
Misty tightened the slink of her chains so they don’t cause any noise as she nodded to him. She wrapped the loose length twice around the grip and breathed once through the nose to slow her heart. Even the anchor seemed to understand and kept still.
The two walked slowly ahead, bypassing what looked like a pile of mangled bodies. Some human, clearely from their clothing, soldiers of the empire. And an occasional cleric here and there. Then soon, paladins. Their tabards were torn in long tidy rents as if a careful hand had cut them after the killing. Sigils were scuffed to anonymity. Belts still held little things men kept close, ribbons, coins rubbed smooth, a carved bone charm for luck that had not changed a thing.
But those weren’t the more attention drawing bodies, but the other creatures mixed with them, faceless bodies with nothing but a circular maw for a mouth, and too many limbs to be anything close to natural, limbs that grew from their sides and backs. Arms and legs. Nails that were not nails but thorns. Skin the color of someone’s breath held too long. All dead, or dying, twitching here and there, but none capable of movement. Their flesh moved like sacks where something had memorized the idea of life poorly. The moans that tried to form stayed trapped inside. The floor around them was sticky with black and red.
All dead, or dying, twitching here and there, but none capable of movement. Misty kept her face forward and her jaw tight, but the hand on the chain paled a shade. Ludwig counted without counting, not to tally, but to let the mind have work so it did not meddle with the hands. He stepped where the blood was thin. He let none of it touch his boots if he could manage it.
Soon, Ludwig arrived to a clearing, where the sound of the hammering was far louder than before. The tunnel opened into a broad chamber propped with thick, ancient ribs of stone and fossil wood. Heat moved in slow waves against the skin, the kind that made breath feel heavier. The light was not torchlight. It was the color of worked metal, a pulsing glow that swelled and settled with each strike. Shadows along the walls paced in long measured arcs, returning to the same places like obedient dogs.
He edged forward and looked in.
The hammer fell again. The sound was clean and final, not frantic, not wild, but the patient rhythm of someone who knew exactly how long the arm should travel and how much weight the wrist should carry.
Ludwig’s face emptied of color. The amulet at his throat cooled like a hand to fever. He centered the point of Durandal low, held still, and let the calm bite down on the first surge of anger before it could grow teeth. He did not search the floor for meaning. He did not count the stains. He kept the mind narrow and left the eyes on the glow.
Misty came level with him, her chain drawn short, the anchor’s head cradled in both hands to tame its sway. “Goodness,” slipped out of her before she could close her mouth over it. She swallowed the rest and set her jaw.
The hammer stopped. Not with hesitation, but as if a line had been struck and reached its end. The glow steadied. Heat settled. Dust hung and did not move.
And the figure at the heart of the chamber turned toward them.
