Ludwig’s lips curled in an ugly way, "Is this not enough proof?" he said through the noise that was trying to split his mind in half.
After all, he was no longer Undead. He was no longer in [Living Vessel]; he was an orc, a normal creature, a creature susceptible to wrath, a dangerous poison.
He could feel the difference in a way that made him hate being alive again. As undead, he could treat emotion like static and ignore it. Here, the static had teeth. It wasn’t just sound. It was pull. It wanted to move his hands.
"We need the elders for this," Dedal said.
"Well, better hurry, I can’t hold this form for long," Ludwig said as he took several breaths.
He controlled his inhalations deliberately, deep, slow, asured, forcing his lungs to obey him instead of letting the wrath breathe through him. The red aura crackled off his body in faint lightning-like threads, snapping and fading against torchlight.
Though no longer undead, he spent a good and long enough ti to know how to deal with noisy abominations that tried to sway his senses, mind, and feelings. Oppressing Wrath was not possible in this form, but he could stall it for a bit. Before it fully consud him and he beca another Wrathful Death.
That possibility wasn’t abstract. He could taste it. He could feel how easy it would be to let go and call it "freedom," and how irreversible that would be for everyone standing nearby.
Dedal hurried among the crowd and went deeper into the settlent.
The crowd parted for him like water, eyes tracking Dedal as if he carried hope by the throat. Ludwig held his stance where he was, not because it was comfortable, but because moving right now would give Wrath an excuse. Wrath would love that excuse.
"You don’t look so good," Akro said as he approached Ludwig.
Akro’s voice was careful. He didn’t co too close, not yet, but he didn’t stay away either. The champion’s posture was that of a man who’d survived enough battles to recognize when an ally was becoming a hazard.
"I’d like it if you remain a bit away from . I’m not in full control right now," Ludwig said as his own muscles were spasming, more like trying to reach for Durandal to start a massacre.
Ludwig forced his fingers to unclench, then reclench, then unclench again, like training a dog not to bite. The effort made sweat bead at his temple, a living body’s betrayal.
"Ludwig..." Gale said as he stood up, "Do you think it will control you?"
Gale’s voice cut through the noise better than most. It carried authority without volu, the way true commanders spoke. His hand was near Oathcarver, ready, not threatening Ludwig, but prepared for the worst possibility.
"Think? Nah, I know this motherfucker has enough power to completely enslave . I’m holding it away."
He didn’t sugarcoat it. Sugarcoating was how you got people killed. If Wrath took him, it wouldn’t be "a mont." It would be a massacre.
"It is good to know your limits, still, rember, you’ve slain it. You can do it again." Gale said.
"I understand your worry. I got this," Ludwig said as he held on to the transformation.
The confidence wasn’t bravado. It was a decision. He couldn’t afford to doubt while standing in the middle of a crowded settlent. Doubt was a crack. Wrath crawled through cracks.
The energy was rabid, wanton even, sparking red lightning all around Ludwig’s orcish form. But he held strong, he held through and true.
Every spark felt like a threat, a warning that the pressure had to go sowhere. Ludwig’s horns pulsed faintly, catching and holding excess like a reservoir that could overflow. He kept his chin level, because if his posture broke, the crowd would break with it.
Until three old Orcs arrived.
They didn’t walk like revelers. They walked like judgent. The crowd parted without being told. Even Damra stepped aside, giving them the space leaders gave to older authority.
Two of them are male, with white hair, short tusks, and a horn in their forehead. While the last, the oldest of the three, a woman with a hunched back, approached.
The two males looked carved by ti, faces lined, eyes sharp, bodies still thick with hard-earned strength. Each had a single horn, smaller than Ludwig’s but unmistakable. The woman moved slower, but there was weight in her slowness, the kind that ca from never needing to hurry because people waited for you anyway. Her back was bent, yet her gaze was straight.
She looked at Ludwig and said, "You’re the one who wishes to rule?"
"More like, get out of this hellhole. And if I need your blessings for that, might as well take it right now."
Ludwig’s bluntness tasted dangerous in a room of elders, but he didn’t have the luxury of politeness. Wrath was still screaming. Every extra second was another second balancing on the edge of losing control.
"To be king is to rule. To rule is to oppress."
"That is tyranny, to rule is to understand," Ludwig said.
The words ca out clean despite the noise in his head. Clean enough that the elder woman’s eyes narrowed with interest rather than offense.
"Good, that is so wise talk."
"A good blacksmith taught that. You cannot rule without knowing, and ruling without knowledge is no different than oppression."
Ludwig kept his breathing steady as he spoke, forcing the orc’s lungs to obey his cadence. Wrath snarled at the back of his skull, furious that he was wasting ti on words instead of violence.
"It is the way of kings to oppress."
"It is the way of a sovereign to lead."
The elder’s single horn caught firelight as she tilted her head, weighing Ludwig the way Andre weighed steel, by how it responded under pressure.
"Do you wish to lead?" she asked.
"I wish to live."
The answer ca too honest to be strategic, and Ludwig knew it. But he didn’t retract it. His whole existence had been reduced to survival shaped into purpose.
She thought for a second, "You don’t sll of life... but of death."
"I was blessed by death."
"And cursed by life," she finished.
The phrasing hit Ludwig like a nail. Not because it was poetic.
Because it was accurate.
"But seek life through serving death," Ludwig replied.
"Then why rule?" she asked.
"To rule is my only way to serve death, and my only way to earn life."
"At the expense of others’ lives?"
"Is this really living? Hiding, in fear, thinking that no harm shall co upon these lands? The harm is gathering and making forces; it is rapidly approaching this place. Then there will be no life, only death, and a broken crown. Nothing to rule..." Ludwig replied.
He gestured faintly with his chin toward the mountain beyond the wards, toward the tree line where the safe lands ended, and the real tower began. His aura flared once, lightning snapping, as if Wrath hated the restraint of argunt.
She stalled for a mont, looked Ludwig in the eyes, and said
"Then be King..."
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