The mountain answered by splitting a seam. The snow directly in front of him cracked along a line, and ice rose with a groan as if a buried cathedral were heaving up its nave. The mace ca with it, shouldering free of the white in a slow, disdainful ascent that set frost smoking off its iron. The haft was buried deep; the head breached last, studded and cruel, a black star with a thousand broken points. Even half-sheathed in snow it towered over him like a keep.
Ludwig stared up until the wind watered his eyes. "Ah," he said faintly, mory returning with the na like a punch. "Right. Reward. For killing the thing." He lifted a hand as if to test the weight of the word and then let it fall. "How am I suppose to even carry this..."
The mace moved. It did not lt or sink so much as draw itself inward, band by band, ring by ring, shedding weight like a snake going out of an old skin, though it didn’t lose it, it folded it inside. The air around it rang once, low and long, and when the sound thinned, the weapon stood at a size rely ridiculous instead of impossible: as tall as he was, thick as a man’s chest, the head a compact brutality of ridges and teeth. It still radiated a pressure, a mory of mass, that made the hair along his forearms try to stand despite the cold flattening them.
"Hah." The Knight King’s voice crested and fell with sothing close to amusent, the tempered smile of steel admiring steel. "I would be dissatisfied if any other man tried to stand upon my blade like a sled again then proceed to break it to bits, but I shall own this: as replacents go, that is no re trinket."
"Replacent?" Ludwig’s mouth twitched. "It is a mace. Oathcarver is..." He stopped. The na touched sothing that did not quite ache, because undead flesh had not ached, and now it did. The last shards of the old sword lay quiet in his inventory like teeth in a pouch. "Was," he corrected under his breath. He drew a breath that burned a little. "I’ll have it fixed. Sohow. The handle’s sound. There are smiths in this world who can stitch mountains together, given coin and ti."
"Do not mistake ," the Knight King said, tone sobering, "I am not jealous. That thing in your hand is a better-made sin than most relics I have seen. Closer to the shard of Durandal you carry than to any common weapon. It reeks of purpose. And a far better alternative than my old broken sword..."
"High praise, still I’m not giving up the weapon that brought all the way to where I am for sothing new and shiny, Oathcarver deserves its respect, without it, I’d be a goner" Ludwig closed his fingers around the mace’s haft. The leather under his palm was cold enough to bite; beneath it the tal humd as if a storm had been convinced to live inside a club. He hefted, tested the pull against the new weight inside his chest. The weapon ca up without balking, eager, as if a door had been opened to it. Surprisingly heavy, but not too heavy it was impossible to wield.
The next veil of notices unrolled across his vision.
[You have obtained, Lord of all that is tal]
[Error, Insufficient Conditions]
[Your tallurgy is insufficient to use [Lord of All that Is tal]
[Optional Quest! Learn more about tal and its properties]
Currently Lord of all that Is tal is disabled.
[You have obtained Noctivex.]
"Lord of... that sounds grand" He stopped, snorted. "He likes his titles." He lifted his hand without thinking, and sothing obeyed: a small, dense cube blinked into being over his palm as if the air had condensed to a single thought. It was tal, yes, but not any tal he knew; its surfaces were too perfect, its corners too sharp, and its faces were engraved with a labyrinth of letters that crawled, that seed to crawl, until he realized the wrongness was in his eye and not the angles.
The cube was heavy in a way that suggested it rembered being heavier. It sat on his palm like a judgnt.
[Inspect]
[The Living Armor of Morde’Xander]
Condition of use unt.
Strength Value over 500
Stamina Value over 500
Charisma Value Over 500
Mana Value Over 5,000
Passive [Lord of All That is tal]
His eyes widened, and the breath he had only just learned to enjoy went briefly astray. His entire body shivered, not sure if it was the cold or the excitent of the thought that ca to be...
"You will get to look like that great walking calamity," Thomas finished, tone halfway between admiration and dread. "Only prettier, I should hope, because man, that guy was the stuff of nightmares..."
"Not going to lie," Ludwig murmured, tilting the cube to catch the grey light. The letters, if they were letters, shifted in their beds and settled again, like trout in a cold stream. "I did not expect that."
"It is a long road," the Knight King warned. "Numbers are not ladders alone, they are bridges only when backfilled with work. But yes." The old steel voice gentled. "If you wear that second skin, the world will think twice before it lays a hand on you. Even a fraction of that thing’s presently Aura is enough to make any man kneel"
Ludwig closed his fingers around Noctivex, and the thing rely was, against the ache and the cold, perfect and patient. "Good," he said softly. "I am tired of being pinched, and it’s ti to give so of what I’ve gotten..."
Below them the mountains laid out their wounds: ridges snapped like ribs, slopes seared to glass, long gouges through which the bones of the earth had been dragged and then forgotten. Far down the line of a valley, where the wind braided banners of snow between the black shoulders of rock, sothing moved like ants along a white table, too many, too quick. He did not need the text to know; the chill that ran under the new heat in his chest told him as plainly as any whisper. Enemies approaching, by the hord.
"Notifications," Thomas prompted, though there was already a rueful note in him. "Before you throw yourself at company."
"I know." He glanced down the slope again. A small fire-stain of urgency flared in him that had nothing to do with wrath and more to do with the long five years behind him. "There are people at the edge. Adventurers. They’re about to be run through; though the bulk of the horde spread out, a good deal of them are going their way... I can feel the stampede’s echoing in the crags." He breathed once, sharp, savoring the pain it brought. "I need... to speak to soone who can speak back, I missed living company."
"You are an undead," Thomas reminded him, automatically, as he had a hundred tis when caution had been the only coin they possessed.
"According to the new passive," Ludwig said, and this ti he did laugh, quick and breath-steaming and unguarded, "apparently not."
He slid Nightbreaker over his shoulder. The haft settled against his spine like it belonged there. He tucked Noctivex away with the care he would have used for a heart in a box. The lantern at his hip humd once, compass-shard having dissipated but the Vestige still there as if requesting a new shard, his regalia fluttered in the wind blowing away the frost at its edges, Then he steadied, as if in agreent or amusent. The heartbeat in his chest answered it. He took three running steps and hurled himself down the slope.
The world leapt up to et him. The air knifed his eyes and made them water. Snow lifted in thin veils off cornices and slapped his face. The cold tried its clever old tricks; they failed, because there was heat inside him now to bargain with them. He left a line down the white, dark and sure, and the mountains, sullen, scarred, unbending, took him back into their teeth as if to test whether he ant what he said. He did.
For the world, the man who had once given his life to push back the nightmare of steel, has once again returned.
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