"Futile. Imperfect. Fallible. Vain."
Pride spoke each word with the sa cold certainty he always carried, as though he were not insulting Ludwig but rely describing an obvious flaw in reality.
With every utterance, one of the countless suspended weapons hanging above the arena shot forward toward Ludwig.
Spears scread through the air, axes rotated violently enough to distort the heat around their edges, and jagged swords ca from angles designed less to kill quickly and more to make movent itself feel impossible.
Ludwig moved anyway. His boots scraped over fractured marble, blood slick beneath one heel and golden reflections flickering across broken stone.
He twisted his torso to avoid a spear aid at his sternum, dipped under the horizontal sweep of a crescent blade, and kicked himself off fractured marble just as an axe crashed into the floor where his skull had been a mont prior.
His breathing was heavy now, less from exhaustion and more from the constant tension of existing inside Pride’s domain. Even the silence between weapon impacts seed to press against his ears, waiting for him to make a mistake.
A halberd ca down from above, its blade catching the light in a long golden flash before it cut toward him with the kind of speed that made thought feel slow.
Ludwig raised Nightbreaker just enough to deflect the shaft aside, tal screaming against tal as the force of the weapon dragged his shoulder down. He had no ti to properly recover. Another weapon arrived from his blind spot and tore cleanly through his left arm.
There was a wet sound, thick and horrible, entirely too human for a place that kept pretending it was above such things. The limb separated at the shoulder and spun away, trailing blood before tumbling across the marble like discarded at. The oversized bastard sword that had severed it continued its montum until it embedded itself halfway into the arena floor, its hilt vibrating from the force of impact. For a fraction of a second, Ludwig’s body did not seem to understand what had happened. His balance shifted wrong. The missing weight on one side pulled his stance open.
Pain arrived a fraction later. It was imdiate, hot, and ugly, a brutal wave that crawled from the ruined shoulder into his chest and neck. Ludwig staggered half a step, teeth grinding together hard enough to ache, but no sound escaped him. He refused to give Pride the satisfaction. He had died enough in front of that golden bastard. If Pride wanted a reaction, he could scrape it out of the marble after Ludwig was dead.
"You beco less the more you struggle," Pride said, watching Ludwig with the sa unbearable detachnt one might reserve for observing a candle burn itself out. "This is the natural result of resisting inevitability."
Ludwig glanced once at the ruined shoulder. Blood poured steadily down his side, warm and slick, running over his ribs and soaking into the torn cloth beneath what remained of his armor. His heartbeat hamred in the wound like a fist beating against an open door. He could feel his body trying to panic, trying to lock around the loss, trying to drag his attention inward toward the damage. He forced his gaze back to Pride instead.
"Nah."
He dropped Nightbreaker, and with his remaining hand against the torn stump and exhaled sharply. "Noctivex. Get on it."
The blackened tal obeyed instantly. It peeled away from Ludwig’s torso in writhing strips, skittered across the marble toward the severed limb, and wrapped around it before dragging it back with unsettling speed. The movent was too alive, too eager, like a swarm of tal insects that had been given permission to crawl through a corpse and call it repair. The arm was slamd back into place with enough force to make Ludwig nearly buckle. Black spikes erupted from the tal and punched through flesh, bone, and muscle, forcibly pinning everything together in a grotesque reconstruction.
Ludwig hissed as Noctivex continued its work, reinforcing the connection by spreading itself over the repaired joint like liquid armor cooling into place. The pain did not fade so much as change shape. The raw agony of dismbernt beca the sharper, cleaner torture of being held together by sothing that did not care whether nerves had opinions. He flexed his fingers once and felt the motion return through a lattice of black tal and spite.
"No growth this ti," Ludwig muttered while rotating the shoulder once to test mobility. "Only makes a bigger target."
The tal shifted in response. Rather than consuming him into its larger war form, Noctivex instead coated Ludwig’s body in tight interlocking black plates. The armor sealed itself around him like a second skin, dark and smooth in so places, jagged and asymtrical in others. Thin fractures ran along the surface, each one pulsing with molten crimson light as wrathful aura leaked outward. It was not the towering monstrosity from before, not the massive war construct that could stare down the gate itself, but sothing leaner, closer, more suited for movent. The plates hugged him tightly enough that he felt every breath scrape against them.
A warped helm folded over Ludwig’s face. It did not form with elegance. It closed like a trap, black plates sliding over his jaw, cheekbones, and brow until the world narrowed through the face of sothing far crueler than flesh. Two narrow red slits ford where his eyes should have been. Through them, Pride’s golden figure sharpened in the distance, frad by floating weapons and the ruined beauty of the arena. Nightbreaker settled comfortably against his shoulder again, its weight familiar and grounding, almost pleasant compared to the rest of this nightmare.
Pride observed the transformation without comnt. He did not frown at the repair. He did not look impressed by Noctivex’s obedience. He simply watched, hands relaxed, posture untouched, as if Ludwig replacing a severed arm in the middle of battle was another flawed behavior unworthy of deeper attention. That silence was irritating. Useful, maybe, but irritating. Ludwig rolled his neck once and stepped forward, the plates around his collar grinding softly.
"You keep calling this futile," he said, dragging the head of Nightbreaker against the marble hard enough to leave a deep white scar behind him. "But from where I’m standing, this has been pretty productive."
"You have lost an arm."
"Temporarily."
"You continue to degrade."
Ludwig laughed. The sound was rough and distorted behind the tal helm, but no less genuine. It rolled out of him through pain, blood loss, and the grinding pressure of the arena, sounding less like amusent and more like sothing broken deciding to enjoy the noise it made.
"That’s funny," he said. "Because from my perspective, I’m doing pretty well."
Pride’s expression did not shift. His golden eyes remained fixed on Ludwig, unreadable and bright, but Ludwig had learned to stop waiting for dramatic cracks. Pride did not shatter loudly. He adjusted by fractions. He reacted in spaces most people would never notice. Ludwig continued walking, every step asured, every scrape of Nightbreaker against the floor another deliberate mark across Pride’s immaculate arena.
"During all this," he said, motioning vaguely between the two of them with Nightbreaker, "I’ve learned a lot."
The weapon ca to rest across his shoulders as he approached. The weight pushed down through his repaired arm, and Noctivex tightened around the joint like a warning. Ludwig ignored it.
Pain could wait in line.
"I learned your authority works differently depending on my state. I learned you rember certain deaths and forget others. I learned how far your rejection extends, what kinds of attacks you refuse, which powers irritate you, and what happens when I force you to react."
He tilted his head, letting the red slits of his helm angle slightly toward Pride’s face rather than his weapons.
"And most importantly, I learned you’re actually kinda shit at fighting."
The statent hung in the air. It did not strike like a spell or crash like Nightbreaker, but it changed the space all the sa. The suspended weapons humd faintly above them. Marble dust drifted in the light. Pride’s gaze remained fixed, but for the first ti in several exchanges, Pride did not imdiately respond.
That alone was enough to widen Ludwig’s grin. The delay was microscopic. aningless to anyone else. Ludwig noticed anyway. He had died too many tis not to. Every pause mattered now. Every hesitation was a footprint. Every silence where Pride should have corrected him beca proof that Ludwig’s words had landed sowhere they were not supposed to.
"There it is," Ludwig muttered.
"That is because you are lesser," Pride finally said. "Only incomplete beings require growth. Learning is the function of deficiency."
His tone remained level. Untouched. Controlled. The kind of tone that wanted the world to mistake explanation for truth.
"I am perfection."
Ludwig nodded slowly, as though accepting the explanation. "Right." He planted Nightbreaker headfirst into the marble and leaned slightly against its shaft, letting the posture look almost casual despite the blood drying along his side and the fresh black tal holding his arm together. The mace cracked the floor under its own weight, and the sound spread outward in thin lines.
"Then explain sothing."
Pride remained silent. This ti Ludwig watched the silence with open interest, like a hunter watching grass move. He did not look at Pride’s hands. He did not look at the suspended weapons. He looked at the face, the one part Pride seed most invested in keeping untouchable.
"If you’re perfect," Ludwig said, "why am I still here?"
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