"Says the immortal selling drugs at the pier..." Ludwig said, his gaze shifting briefly toward the old fisherman’s retreating back and the small pouch of opium being tossed in his hand.
The half-frozen sea groaned behind them, ice scraping over dark water, while the brazier hissed at Ludwig’s side.
Coal smoke mixed with salt, fish rot, wet rope, and the faint sweet stink of the drug that had just changed hands. In a place where n dragged empty nets from a dying sea, seeing an immortal hiding among them as a supplier of poison had a certain ugly poetry to it.
"That’s rude," the young man said as he approached Ludwig, his eyes turning red. Crimson bled slowly across his irises, sharpening his youthful face into sothing older and far less harmless. The sailors nearby continued their work, unaware of the pressure gathering near the brazier, while the young man stepped closer with the calm confidence of a predator tired of pretending to be prey.
"Quite the powerful Vampire," Kaiser said as he tilted his head. "Never seen sothing like this... you’ve done sothing to yourself haven’t you?" His tone shifted from amusent to genuine interest, which in Kaiser’s case was sohow more unsettling than hostility. Mana coiled beneath the surface of his disguise, restrained but ready.
"Ah, a Lich that knows his stuff," he said as he stood next to Ludwig. The vampire stopped close enough that a normal man would have stepped away, but Ludwig remained still. The red in the young man’s eyes reflected faintly in the brazier light, and the cold around him felt older than the sea wind.
"Hmm, looks like you completely gave up your mana, a physical prowess-based Vampire, in terms of bloodline you’re far inferior to soone like Van Dijk, and Celine," Kaiser said, "But in terms of raw vampiric power... I can’t say I’ve seen soone as powerful as you... you’re a monster, true and through." Kaiser spoke like a scholar studying a rare specin. Ludwig caught the faint tightening around the vampire’s mouth at Celine’s na. There it was. Another confirmation.
"So, what are you two doing in my territory?" he asked. The words ca softly, but there was ownership in them. Not noble ownership. Not legal ownership. Sothing older. A predator had chosen a place, and strangers had entered it.
Ludwig frowned, looked around at the hamlet and said, "This dump? Your territory? Why not take residence in the Bastos march?" His eyes moved over the sagging huts, empty nets, frozen pier, and fishern who looked like winter had been chewing on them for months. If this was territory, it was not the kind immortals bragged about.
"Too many sad mories, also a mutt is watching over that placed, waiting for to get there." The vampire’s voice lost so of its edge. For a mont, the youthful mask looked tired. Not weak. Just old in a way that face had no right to be.
"The Treacherous Fanged Apostle." Ludwig said the na with deliberate weight, watching Able closely.
"You’ve t him? And lived?" the vampire asked. Surprise cut clearly through his expression. Not fear, but disbelief, as if Ludwig had claid to shake hands with a plague and walked away with only a cough.
Ludwig pulled aside his coat a bit enough that the hanging lantern showed up, "Let’s say I took over." The Soul Letting Lantern swung faintly at his side, catching the brazier’s orange glow and twisting it into sothing pale. The vampire’s gaze locked onto it imdiately, and his casual hostility sharpened into sothing personal.
The redness of the man’s eyes turned more vile, darker even. Frost crept along the pier beneath his boots, and the brazier fla leaned away from him for half a second before snapping upright again.
"You’re the sa as him, quite the guts you have showing up here, do you not fear for your life? Undead." His voice dropped lower, and the word undead ca out like a verdict. Ludwig could feel the threat beneath it. Real. Imdiate. Not theatrical.
"Interesting choice of words, but I’m not the sa thing as that, I’m a real apostle, he’s been banished form Necros’s service." Ludwig kept his tone even, though the comparison sat badly in his chest. Being compared to the Treacherous Fanged Apostle was disgusting enough without being inaccurate.
That bastard deserved a worse fate than simply death. And he’s been causing trouble since the first day Ludwig knew his na.
"Either way, you both serve a nefarious god." Able’s eyes remained fixed on the lantern. His posture stayed relaxed, but the pier suddenly felt too small.
"Just because everyone fears death doesn’t an you get to call it a bad na," Ludwig said. The reply ca sharper than intended, but he did not regret it. Death was terrifying because it was final, not because it was malicious. People loved blaming the door because they hated the room it led to.
"You hold a lot of Pride for a slave." Able said it with a faint sneer, eyes flicking from the lantern to Ludwig’s face. The word slave was ant to cut. It almost did. There were chains Ludwig could not deny, quests he had not asked for, and gods who treated suffering as a useful tool. But after fighting Pride, the insult no longer bent him as easily.
"Call it whatever you want, it’s a deal. Between , and sothing you’ll never amount to, nor will be compared with, so, tell us, where is Celine?" Ludwig asked. He had not co here to debate theology with a drug-dealing vampire uncle on a frozen pier. Celine was the point. Solania was the disaster. Ti was already too thin.
"You believe yourself strong? Strong enough to demand things from ?" Able asked. There was challenge in the question now, and a thin trace of curiosity.
"I am strong."
[You have activated Self Evident Truth]
[I AM STRONG]
’Huh? I didn’t activate shit, what?’ Ludwig for a second was surprised with what just happened. But it seems that his declaration right now activated the Crown of Pride. The invisible thorns across his forehead burned cold, settling into place with sudden pressure. The words had not been a boast to him. They were simply true. Not strongest. Not invincible. Just strong.
For a mont sothing radiated from Ludwig, which made the Vampire hesitate. It was not mana, holy light, necromantic aura, or the chill of undeath. It was sothing else unknown to Ludwig, familiar, clean and self-contained. The air around him aligned around the statent, forcing the world to acknowledge the definition he had declared.
"You’re a madman... how did you do that?" He said. Able’s hesitation lasted only a second, but it was enough. His red eyes widened slightly, not with fear, but with the alarm of soone seeing a rule break in front of him.
"Do what?" Ludwig tilted his head. The confusion was partly honest, partly useful. He genuinely had not ant to trigger the Crown, but admitting that fully seed unwise. Better to look like he had done it casually.
"This thing, this vow, you declared sothing that shouldn’t be spoken. Words that are easily broken, but the will behind them, makes them sound true enough that the world is acknowledging it...Authority." He said. His mockery was gone now. For a vampire who had abandoned mana, his understanding of power remained sharp. He knew Ludwig had not cast a spell. He had asserted sothing and forced the world to consider it valid.
"Yeah..." the lich took a step back, not afraid of Ludwig, gauging, "It’s like... you’re using the power of gods. That’s not sothing that should be feasible, what happened with Pride?" Kaiser’s eyes narrowed with scholarly hunger, which was one of his more worrying expressions.
"Nothing much, just the usual, fight an usurper, kill an usurper, usurp one of its abilities." Ludwig turned to the Vampire. The answer was deliberately dismissive. Explaining months of dying, adapting, and psychologically dismantling Pride on a pier while fishern dragged empty nets around them seed a bit much.
"You can’t use sothing like this..." he looked back toward the mountain, "You’re the one who killed the Guardian. I sense its beating heart in you." Able’s gaze moved from Ludwig’s face to his chest, or deeper, to the remnant still pulsing inside him. His expression hardened, though the anger there was complicated.
"It’s not a guardian, never was, just a brute. Strong, but a brute." Ludwig did not soften the answer. Power did not automatically make sothing noble. Still, from the fishern’s empty nets and Able’s expression, killing the brute had broken a balance.
"If you say so. It protected these lands from what lay in the other side. A brother of the sa level as that which you call a brute is leading an army here... the guardian was the only thing stopping him from pouring over to this place. But you can’t stop it..." Able said. His eyes shifted toward the mountains, where the white peaks stood like walls between Solania and what was coming.
"And you sent Celine there? you’re the one who’s mad." Ludwig’s voice sharpened. Celine facing sothing like that for training did not sit well. He understood harsh lessons. He had lived inside one lately. But there was harsh, and then there was lunacy disguised as preparation.
"It’s for her own good, she needs to know what she is about to face. Unlike that wretch of a brother she has, she has a far stronger tuning with her vampiric prowess. He was attuned to magic more." Able said. There was no apology in his tone. In his mind, this was necessity. Ludwig hated that he could understand the logic.
"Why did you never help?" Ludwig asked.
"That question again..." Able frowned.
"She must have asked, and probably even Van Dijk asked." Ludwig said. Family absences were rarely clean. They left marks whether anyone admitted it or not.
"No, he never did. He still blas himself for what happened that day. No amount of comforting and telling him it was the whims of a barbaric dog that caused his family’s downfall would help. He needs his own revenge." Able’s voice quieted, and the oldness in him showed more clearly. Van Dijk blaming himself fit too well. The man wrapped guilt in cruelty and genius until no one could tell where one ended and the other began.
"Then what stopped you from helping them?" Ludwig asked. He did not let the silence settle.
"My brother did. I was banished from that March. For being too... hungry." He said. The last word hung between them with enough implication that Ludwig’s thoughts supplied several unpleasant possibilities and decided it did not need details.
Ludwig didn’t need to know more. Vampires and their habits, are not sothing you’d want to experience or hear about. The less said about what too hungry ant in a noble march full of warm-blooded servants, soldiers, and citizens, the better.
"Regardless, you’re here, speaking to as if I’m soone beneath you, to be ordered and commanded as you see fit." Able said. The red returned more strongly to his eyes, and the cold around him deepened. His youthful face hardened into sothing aristocratic and predatory.
"It is the right of the strong." Ludwig replied. The words ca easily, and the Crown of Pride prickled again. Power was not a moral argunt. It was a tool, a fact, a burden, and sotis the only language dangerous people respected.
"Then prove it to , show if you’re really worthy." He said. Able stepped back from the brazier, snow cracking beneath his boots as frost spread outward. His eyes glowed red in the dull light, and the wind off the frozen sea seed to bend around him.
Ludwig rolled his shoulder, feeling Noctivex stir beneath his coat, and wondered if every useful conversation in this world had to eventually beco a fight. Considering his luck, the answer was probably yes.
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