Deus Necros

Chapter 493: Power Struggle

“let’s go,” Ludwig turned his back to Mot and went toward his party members.

He moved with the casual economy of a man who had learned to carry threat and tiredness at once, shoulders folding into the slope as if the mountain itself were a cloak. Snow crunched faintly under his boots, thin and brittle with cold, and sparks of breath ghosted the space where he walked. The little windows of notification that had flared in his mind earlier winked and dimmed at the edge of his vision; for the moment he pushed them aside. Mot’s presence remained at his back like a weight both comforting and dangerous. Ludwig did not hurry his step. There was no need for that among enemies and friends.

“What’s the meaning of this, Saint Mot! You’re allowing traitors of the Empire and the Holy Order to roam free!”

The shout snapped the cold into sharper facets. Hiro’s voice carried a mixture of indignation and brittle authority, the sort of outrage that leans on custom rather than courage. His boots skidded in the ice as he planted himself in the small field of view between Ludwig and Mot, chest bright with the crested mark of the Order. Around his mouth a tremor of frost had formed from his breath, and his hand hovered, not entirely steady, over the haft at his hip. There was a proud red flush to his face that the wind could not erase, anger keeping the blood warmer than the air.

“Be very careful of who you call a traitor to the empire, the last time sir Davon was fighting the threat of the Wrathful Death, you were running with your tail behind your legs.”

The riposte was effortless from Mot, but not unkind. It had the slow cruelty of a fact laid on the table, dry and stinging. The memory he invoked was familiar enough to pull at the edges of the paladins’ confidence. A dozen small expressions tightened at once, surprise, shame, the thin line where pride meets memory. Hiro’s mouth opened, closed, found nothing to say that would cleanly reclaim the claim.

He swallowed on the cold air; a pocket of silence opened where the band of men shifted, boots scraping and armor whispers binding their nerves into attention. The pressure of expectation pressed at the back of Hiro’s neck like a hand.

“Let’s go, we need to head deeper into Solania to check on the Dark Continent’s invasion. We can’t waste time here,” Mot said as the group of Paladins seemed to also agree to follow him.

The paladins exchanged looks, and one by one nodded, the motion small but inexorable. The group rearranged itself without drama, boots and cloaks shifting like a single organism changing course.

“I’m this group’s leader! You can’t just order them around!” Hiro followed after Mot complaining about how his authority was being Undermined, though even if Mot seemed to speak words like, “Sure sure, you’re the leader, but we’re still heading forward.”

“Not because you said so, but because it’s our mission!” Hiro muttered.

He spoke into the backs of men and the wind took his indignation the way it took everything here, thin, quickly cooled, and without consequence. The line of his jaw showed the effort it cost to hold on to authority when other powers were more immediate.

Everyone in his group however seemed to realize that the moment Saint Mot appeared though the Hero was there, the real shot caller was the saint.

It was an old and weary lesson dressed in new clothes, presence over title, the charisma that bends soldiers to will. Ludwig noted it without surprise. In the half-light, rank was an outline and reality a shade.

The party dissolved into a moving wedge of cloaks and mail, the sight of them leaving pressed into the slope as a temporary scar. The young mage in the trailing ranks spat a look toward Ludwig over his shoulder, hot with judgment and the unspent blame of makeshift rumors. Ludwig felt the sting but let it pass. Small stones skittered down the slope in their wake.

“Right,” Ludwig said as he turned to the new addition, “Celine, been a whil-” he couldn’t finish his words before he was ’assaulted?’ with a diving hug, “HAH you’re still alive!” she said, there was a mix of joy and relief clear in her eyes.

The interruption arrived with warmth and motion, Celine’s arms were both greeting and proof, a humane anchor after the shifting currents of politics and power. Snow flew in a soft arc from the spread of her cloak. Her embrace squeezed a memory into place: a hundred small things, laughter in the wrong hall. She smelled faintly of leather and camphor. Her voice, when it broke free, tremored with something like thankfulness.

“You look like you missed me a lot,” Ludwig said.

He kept an edge of dry humor in his words to hide how that sudden contact settled the tremor in his chest. It was a small human trade: jokes for softness, banter used to calibrate the distance between two people who had been far from one another.

“Ahem,” Celine let go of Ludwig, after all, she was the proud daughter of the Bastos family, though the family had long since fallen and disappeared, the Seven-Hundred-year-old Celine was still of noble blood, and needed to have at least some decorum of presence especially around strangers.

She straightened, smoothing the front of her coat with a practiced motion that said more about habit than pride. Her composure rolled back over her like armor. Though the hug had loosened her caution, she made room for decorum to return. Age gave her the advantage of small ironies; she could be both affectionate and formal in a breath.

“Yes, I’m glad you’re okay. But seems like we’ll have to depart as soon as possible,” Celine said. Follow current ᴏᴠʟs on novel-fire.net

Her glance was quick and businesslike now, a pivot from personal to practical. She sensed the shift in Mot’s posture, the thread of urgency that now tugged at the group. There is always a point where politeness curdles into necessity; Celine’s voice marked that seam.

“Yeah, I can’t stay here any longer,” Ludwig said as he was trying not to focus on the windows that appeared in front of his eyes.