Ludwig pressed his palms on the door. And the whole structure shook. The massive gate had been built to make lesser beings feel like insects before it, all towering tal and impossible weight, its surface engraved with shapes that caught the red sheen leaking from Noctivex’s armor.
For a mont, nothing moved. Then the pressure from his enlarged body rolled forward, not as a simple push, but as a slow, crushing demand. The steps under his boots cracked deeper, dust spilling between the seams, and the hinges of the gate answered with a sound like sothing old being forced to rember pain.
Though the gate was gigantic, the pressure Ludwig applied was enough to make it groan, and feel like a titan was pushing a heaven’s door.
The door gave way inch by inch, each movent accompanied by a shriek that echoed through the palace and bounced back from the walls as if the place itself objected to him entering in this form.
Too bad. Objections could join the pile of dead Ludwigs behind him.
Pride, who, every ti Ludwig arrived had always sothing to say simply stared. That silence was the first real difference. Every previous entrance had been t by words, by disdain dressed as greeting, by that effortless arrogance that made Pride sound less like a person and more like a law offended by soone breathing too loudly near it.
Now, the being in the arena said nothing. He stood there in the center of the vast chamber, immaculate and untouched, frad by gold, mirrors, and the ridiculous beauty of the palace, but his gaze had fixed on Ludwig’s towering armored form with a stillness that stretched one second too long.
Even with his new height, the entrance forced him to bend slightly, the jagged horns and spikes of his armor scraping close to the gate’s upper fra. His boots struck the polished floor with deep, punishing thuds that traveled outward in faint ripples through the palace stone.
The arena opened around him, wide and gleaming, too pristine for the kind of violence that had already happened here dozens of tis. The mirrors along the walls caught his reflection and fractured it into a hundred dark giants, each one carrying the sa colossal mace, each one burning with the sa red light beneath blackened tal.
"You... are not my brother..." he said as Ludwig stared down at him.
Pride’s voice carried upward without strain, calm enough to be insulting, but there was sothing beneath the words that had not been there before.
Not fear, not yet.
Pride would probably choke on the concept before admitting it.
But attention, certainly. Recognition, maybe. Ludwig’s helm tilted down, narrow slits of baleful light fixed on the smaller figure below.
After so many deaths spent being treated like dust beneath a royal boot, the simple act of looking down on Pride felt almost therapeutic.
Not enough to make up for the dying, but it was a start.
"I’ve had enough of being the one beneath your gaze. Kneel!" he pressed his palm forward and for a mont, it felt like the whole world was about to crash upon Ludwig.
Ludwig felt the authority press into him from above, inside, and everywhere at once, searching for the place where obedience should have been and trying to crush him into the shape Pride desired. His knees dipped a fraction, stone cracking beneath the pressure, while his grip tightened around Nightbreaker’s shaft until the tal creaked in his fist.
Almost.
[You have resisted Prideful Authority.]
The notification appeared in front of his sight, blue against the red-black slit of the helm, clean and almost offensively simple after the pressure that had just tried to grind him flat. Ludwig’s body straightened slowly, not because the weight remained, but because he wanted Pride to see the movent.
Sowhere deep inside the tal, Noctivex seed to flex with satisfaction, like a chained beast realizing the leash on the other monster did not reach quite as far as it thought.
"Didn’t expect that one, did you?" The sound filled the arena differently than his normal speech, dragged through the helm and warped by living tal until it rolled across the chamber like iron gates closing.
Ludwig could not see the whole of the being’s face clearly from behind the glow and shadow, but he saw enough.
A still jaw. A narrowed gaze.
The first little chip in the polished statue.
"Borrowed power does not make you less insignificant!" Pride’s voice sharpened, and the chamber seed to answer him, the mirrors trembling faintly along the walls.
The gold and treasures around the arena reflected his disdain back a hundred tis, making the palace feel like it had been built only to agree with him. Ludwig could almost admire the commitnt.
Imagine creating an entire environnt just so your ego never had to sit in a quiet room alone. It was pathetic in a cosmic, lethal sort of way.
Unfortunately, pathetic did not an weak.
"Shut up and eat my mace!" Ludwig said, for the first ti, the frustration of always dying without doing anything disappeared. And he stepped into the swing. His body twisted, armored feet grinding into the floor, waist and shoulders turning together as Noctivex’s plates slid over one another with a roar of tal.
Nightbreaker ca down from his shoulder in a colossal arc, dragging the air after it. The weapon’s head howled in the space, not rely cutting through it but bullying it aside, the red aura along Ludwig’s armor flaring as the strike gathered every piece of humiliation, repetition, and death he had swallowed since walking into this cursed palace.
And the swing struck true as the Mace howled. For a fraction of a breath, Ludwig felt the line of impact align perfectly: footing, torque, grip, weight, Wrath, and Nightbreaker’s enlarged mass all feeding into one sideway blow.
The arena lights bent around the weapon’s path, and the polished floor beneath Pride’s feet reflected the incoming strike like a prophecy of its own destruction.
Ludwig’s instincts, sharpened by failure after failure, scread that this was it, that at the very least Pride would have to move, block poorly, reveal sothing.
Any reaction would be information, and information was the only currency worth more than souls right now.
Only for Pride to raise a palm toward the incoming blow and stop the weapon in its track without moving a single inch from his position.
There was no explosion at first, no dramatic burst of force, just an impossible halt. Nightbreaker stopped against Pride’s open hand as if it had struck the end of reality.
Ludwig’s entire body continued the motion for a sickening instant, montum pouring forward with nowhere to go.
The mace did not budge.
Pride did not slide. His arm did not bend. He stood next to the shadow of the giant weapon and held it there with the casual cruelty of soone stopping a child’s toy from falling off a table.
"You gotta be shitting ..."
Force that has been released had to go sowhere, and since Pride denied it, it returned to its owner.
The backlash traveled through Nightbreaker’s shaft and slamd into his hands like a battering ram made of his own strength. It roared up his wrists, through his elbows, into his shoulders, and the armor around his arms shrieked as the internal structure beneath it failed. The world inside the helm flashed white-red, and for a mont all he could hear was the brutal cracking of himself.
The damage was obscene, intimate, imdiate. Bone splintered beneath the armor, muscle tore, and the vines woven through his body burst through gaps in Noctivex’s plates, spilling dark blood and fibrous strands that stead against the heated seams of the living tal. His shoulders sagged forward at unnatural angles, the colossal weapon suddenly dragging at him with a weight his ruined arms could no longer properly command.
The pain did not arrive as a single sensation. It arrived as a crowd, every nerve screaming over the others, each broken piece of him insisting it deserved priority.
He almost let go of Nightbreaker. The mace shifted in his grip, its handle sliding a fraction through his claws, and that tiny movent felt more dangerous than the backlash itself.
Letting go would an losing the one thing in his hands that made Pride react at all. Letting go would an standing there as a giant armored idiot with broken arms and a very expensive death wish.
Ludwig’s fingers trembled around the shaft, blood and torn vine matter slicking the inside of his gauntlets.
The smarter part of him, the part that enjoyed surviving, suggested retreating half a step. The angrier part asked if he had learned absolutely nothing from dying a couple dozen tis.
But he gripped it and ripped it back, broken arms and slumped shoulders, it looked far too deaning for soone wearing such armor.
The motion was ugly, not powerful. He dragged Nightbreaker free by stubbornness more than strength, his elbows hanging wrong, his shoulders caved beneath the massive plating.
The image reflected in the cracked mirrors around the arena was almost humiliating: a towering war construct with the posture of a beaten dog.
Pride’s presence ahead remained untouched, and that made the pain taste worse. Ludwig’s helm dipped for the briefest mont, not in submission, but because his body had forgotten how to hold itself together.
For the first ti, Ludwig began feeling sothing he never thought possible.
For the first ti, Ludwig’s mind was invaded by a disgraceful emotion.
The worst emotion one could have.
Despair
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