Tenebroum Ch. 202-204

Merry Christmas everyone! Sadly, all I got you this year was words (again!) Still, please enjoy your bonus chapter in good health and holiday cheer!

Ch. 202 - Purging the Darkness (part 2)

That night was a long one for Leo. Not because of his injuries, though; they were severe. It was because of the evil dreams. In a place this dark, he felt like he was suffocating. And each time he fell asleep, the glowing nimbus around him faded enough for that darkness to touch his soul. The results were inevitably shocking. 

He dreamed of families betraying and poisoning one another. He dreamed of food riots and people killing each other for loaves of bread. Worst of all, he dreamed of some dark, towering monstrosity looming above the city that was so diffuse that no matter how many times he swung at it with his glowing blade, it simply reformed before going on to devour more families. 

In the dream, Leo’s light protected him, but that did little good for anyone else, and all he could do was struggle in vain against it while he wished to be stronger. There was nothing he could do against a monster like this, though. The brighter he glowed, the more it retreated, but that didn’t stop him from eating the rest of the world, like some kind of miles-tall jellyfish or hydra. 

Leo woke bathed in sweat as he tried to sort out dreams from reality and looked for threats in the small room he’d sealed. Fortunately, he was alone, even if it didn’t feel that way. 

“Were those just dreams or…” he wondered aloud, unable to finish the thought. Or did those things actually happen. 

It was a hard thing to consider, but he didn’t really have another choice. He’d never dreamed such awful things before, so either the evil here was toying with his mind, or some parts of what he’d seen had actually occurred. It was a terrifying thought to consider. What could have possibly happened to these people to make me think their souls had been ripped out like that en masse? He wondered as he started taking apart the barricade that had kept him safe last night and started poking around the castle. 

The rest of the building held no answers either. It contained a few bodies here and there that he beheaded just to be sure, but except for an ominous bloodstain in the throne room, there were no real signs of violence. Anything valuable had been stripped from the place. There were neither tapestries on the wall nor anything made of gold or silver.

Leo wasn’t sure if that was the evil that had done this, though, or if looters had come after. “Looters would mean that someone out there is still breathing, at least,” he said hopefully. Trying and failing to imagine what undead evil would want with tapestries or gold coins. 

Leaving the castle was somewhat harder than entering it had been because it no longer had a functioning drawbridge, but when Leo went outside, he saw that the giant grab was now nothing but a smoldering pile of ooze. He found a way across that gave him a wide berth to that mess, and then he spent the rest of the day searching basements in the other large buildings of the city. 

That became his routine for the next few weeks. He’d thought that the ruination of Rhakin meant that searching through the city would go quickly, but instead, it just meant that there were more places for the darkness to hide. 

Some days, he found abominations laying in wait beneath the stairs or in the darkest crevices beneath collapsed buildings, and some days, he found nothing at all, but every night, more monsters rose up from the dead and sought him out. As always, they were made of mangled flesh and rusted metal, though, occasionally, he found more ghostly opponents that only needed him to burn brightly to dispel.  

He wanted to. He wanted to keep purging this city of evil until the black plumes that showed its taint had vanished completely, but it wasn’t that easy. The reality was that after the first couple of days and the first dozen nights, there really wasn’t much left to kill. Terrible things had happened in this city, but when the evil that had slaughtered this place was done, it had left to go destroy something else, and only the dregs were left now. 

It felt like such a waste, and he wanted to ask himself what all this destruction was for, but then the truth was the destruction was what it was for. “Evil for evil’s sake,” he sighed, remembering the line that Brother Faerbar often quoted from the Book of Days. “The dark requires neither logic nor purpose. It darkens and despoils merely because it is.”

The words might be true, but they offered him no solace. Leo wished then that the Templar had told him and the others more stories about fighting the dark. He’d seen more than anyone but had, for obvious reasons, been reluctant to delve too deeply into the topic when speaking to an audience of children. 

“Perhaps I should go to Blackwater,” Leo mused. He didn’t know where that was exactly, but he knew it was somewhere to the southwest. If Jordan’s stories were to be believed, you could see it from dozens of miles off because of the inky spire of shadows that soared into the sky, but realistically, it wouldn’t be hard to find. All one had to do was follow the river west until it became the Oroza and then follow that south until…

“Until what?” he asked glumly, kicking rocks. “Whatever happened there is even older than whatever happened here. Whoever’s behind all of this… whatever happened… they’re likely long gone anyway.”

It was depressing. It was like the world had been abandoned, and Leo and the rest of them had been left behind. Even Jordan was gone now, and Leo was fairly certain he hadn’t seen a hundred people since Sanctuary shattered.  

There were only two choices, though, and since one of them involved returning to his friends so that he could apologize for running off on his own, he chose the other: kill everything that moved. Leo spent the next few weeks methodically going from house to house and purging anything he found. 

He said prayers for the dead that looked like victims more than monsters, and he chopped the monsters into pieces so small they’d never rise again. When all that was done, he looked at what else there was to do, and it was only then that he found the catacombs beneath the city. 

That was where he found monsters made of pure shadow. Oh, there were creatures of flesh and blood, too, but it was the inky wraiths that surprised him.  

Leo finally thought he’d found the true evil that hunted this city when he was attacked by a sinuous twelve-headed hydra from the darkness, but he was wrong. As terrifying as the things were, they were incredibly easy for him to defeat. The wraiths might look terrifying, but unlike the shadowy leviathan of his dreams, they were utterly obliterated by the touch of his glowing blade. 

When the hydra lashed out at him, he cut off half a dozen heads with his glowing blade on impulse, cauterizing the stumps and doing enough damage that the thing began to fade away almost immediately. That fight was over before it started, and the ones that followed were not much longer. 

Gruesome creatures of every description lurked in the catacombs and ossuaries beneath the city. There were slender shadows of men with knives for fingers and animals that belonged in nightmares and mythology. They were less of a menagerie and more of a tide, but Leo fought his way through the flimsy force without complaint, dissipating as many shadows as he could until one day, he found himself wandering the crypts, utterly alone. 

Like moths, they’d been drawn to the flame only to die from it. They couldn’t help themselves, and now, just like that, the wound had been lanced, and there were no more shades left for him to purge. To say it was disappointing was an understatement. Still, there were the occasional skeletons left to fight, so even though all this work had done little to remove the pall over Rahkin, he kept going. 

Every monster I kill is one less than can ever hurt anyone else again, he told himself as he delved ever deeper. The words rang hollow, though. He still felt like he was wasting his time. 

That was when he found the wyrm. It wasn’t a real dragon. It couldn’t be, but it was a collection of bones that was held together by dark magic that might as well have been. One moment, Leo was walking through the winding paths of an overloaded ossuary with a ceiling so high that his light was lost in the darkness, and the next… well, the next, he was standing amidst a storm of bones, doing his very best to parry the worst of them, as a gigantic dragon assembled, and lashed out at him. 

He hadn’t even suspected that there’d been something this dangerous left in Rahkin, not after all the recent days with so little to show for them. Now, suddenly, he was fighting for his life as blows rained down on him. Unlike the shadows, this thing was a very real threat. Though its swirling bones weren’t strong enough to get through his armor, the blows of its giant claws or its snapping jaws would have been enough to crush him or cut him in two. 

Leo dove and rolled as much as he parried and struck, desperate to stay one step ahead of the beast. He succeeded in that much, but even if he’d wanted to escape, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make it to such a far destination before the thing devoured him. 

How do I even kill this thing? He wondered in frustration as he did his best to cleave bone after endless bone. There were tens of thousands of the things, though, and he would run out of the energy to swing his sword long before it ran out of pieces for its body. 

When the thing looked like it was about to breathe fire on him, Leo thought it was all over for a moment. He could get hurt pretty bad and recover, but something like dragon fire or a storm of bone shards might well flense him to nothing. 

That wasn’t what happened, though. Instead, it was nothing but a cloud of darkness that was burned away by his light. He had no idea what such an attack might do to someone who wasn’t so well-prepared, but then, no one would ever find out because he was going to finish this. As his light pierced the dark and dissipated that foul breath weapon, he’d seen the true core of the thing hiding there inside the bony skull, and he struck. 

Leo didn’t run toward it or leap in the air to strike it. Instead, he extended the light from his blade, striking at the thing from halfway across the room like it was some sort of lance. No, it was longer than that. It was a beam of pure light, and in the instant it pierced the dark heart of the draconic monstrosity, the whole thing fell apart. 

It was only then, as bone pieces rained down all around him, that he leaned heavily against the wall, gasping for breath, that he noticed the rats. Leo’s first thought was that they were the first he’d seen exploring this city. The second was that they didn’t appear to be alive. Dead or not, that didn’t stop them from looking at him with intense, hungry eyes. 

Leo had come a long way since he first tried to channel enough light to take out a blackbird. This time, it was effortless. He simply reached out, and the first one burst into white flames. The others scattered as that happened, but they weren’t fast enough. Fire followed them, even past his gaze. Some magic he did not understand linked them together, and where one burned, another soon followed. He watched the light ripple its way down the hallway he’d been getting ready to go down as each unseen rat briefly became a torch before it was snuffed out for good.

“Who would reanimate rats?” Leo asked, with a shake of his head. Perhaps an evil mage still lives somewhere here, he thought to himself. Perhaps he’s spying on me from afar. 

Leo didn’t know whether that made him want to keep digging through the rubble for more evil or if he should try to escape before whatever trap was sprung. Either way, it sent a chill down his spine and made him think that perhaps he should make some time to see his friends soon. Things were getting weird. He’d been gone for months now, and if he didn’t show up soon, they’d almost certainly decide that he’d died somewhere along his adventure.

Ch. 203 - Something New

It hurt the Voice of Reason to watch the glittering white city of Tanda burn, but safely inside her glittering prison cell, she had no reason to fear. Still, as she watched slender towers topple and gardens burst into flames, she thought that if she had the option, she would have gladly sacrificed herself to end this. 

It wasn’t just that she abhorred violence where there were other ways to solve conflicts, either. It was that the city had been a work of unparalleled beauty, and she hated to watch it suffer, even from her distant location, somewhere beyond it. From here, she could look up at the night sky and watch the battle very easily.

Normally, her view consisted of stars that were people’s lamps and cookfires. They were predictable lines and constellations that were shaped by the streets of the city, and she’d grown to appreciate them. Even if the distant view robbed her of all the beautiful details that she knew were there, it let her appreciate the whole thing in a holistic way that might not have been possible otherwise. That was, at least until the sun rose. Then, all those fires were extinguished, and she was alone in the dark with her undead servants until sunset started the cycle anew. 

Tonight, though, the city was burning, and as a result, the skies were on fire, especially on the northeast horizon, farthest from the harbor, where the city wall that was the edge of her world had been partially torn down, and the monster that had done all this damage was coming through. 

The Voice of Reason had no idea why the giant beast was attacking the city. She didn’t know if there had been negotiations or a conversation. No one had told her anything. 

All she knew was that for the last three nights, terrible battles had been waged, and men had died. Even from this distance, she could smell that much death on the wind. Now, though, the city’s vulnerable underbelly was laid bare, and it was inside the defenses. It was nothing that she recognized. 

The monster was as big as a house. With words like rat and wolf being thrown around up until now, she hadn’t been sure exactly what she was expecting, but it wasn’t this. This was sure savagery. Men were ripped in half, and other terrible things, though from this distance, she had trouble making out any details. It was visible only by the malevolent glow that came from the constellations of fire and destruction that surrounded it. 

Once, it looked up past whatever barrier separated them, and she could have sworn that it saw her, even though she was being kept in a prison that didn’t really exist physically. It was a chilling sensation, but soon enough, it was gone because that was the moment that Tanda Nihara chose to take the field. 

The Goddess of the city was not a warrior. She was a merchant and an artist, and when she fought, it was not with her hands but with the walls of the buildings that surrounded the beast. 

Masonry twisted out of place in a series of avalanches that rained tons of brick on the giant chimera. The streets gave way, allowing it to fall into the sewers to be buried alive. Each of these attacks would have murdered any number of mortals, but against this monstrosity, they only slowed it down enough for defenders to regroup. Theirs was a hopeless cause, though, for the thing’s claws were nearly as large as the scimitars that were wielded against it, and free men, along with eunuch slave warriors, died in droves. 

For a time, the Voice of Reason lost sight of the monster as the destruction continued, and she tracked its progress only by the fires and the lights that went out along its path. When it finally reemerged from the smoke and the dust, it was practically at the palace, but after everything that had been done, it looked only a little worse for the wear.

The battle that followed there was brief. She’d seen mages fight her dark lord’s forces in the final days of Rahkin, but this was different. Here, the mages didn’t use fire and lightning; they called down shooting stars and vicious blasts of sand. The former stopped the monstrous juggernaut for a time, but the latter made no difference as far as she could tell from this distance.   

It was only then, when there were no other options, that Tanda Nihara fought the thing herself with blades of crystal and spears of stone. She was outmatched, though. The Voice could see that from the start, in so far as she could see anything from so far away. When the monster sent the stone woman reeling, the Voice’s heart went out to her, but something about the beast's presence made it impossible to cry out. 

Then, just like that, the fight stopped. Suddenly, the chimera had the City’s Goddess on the ground and could have finished her off, but instead, it paused, looking to the south. Then, it turned and started racing back the way it came so quickly that she wasn’t sure what had happened. 

Did she find some threat against it? The Voice of Reason wondered. Is there something that a creature like that actually fears?

Before she could think too much about that, the Goddess manifested in front of the Voice, phasing out of the wall before collapsing on the ground. She was gravely wounded, with huge claw marks that would have seen her disemboweled if she’d had any internal organs to worry about. 

Instead, she lay there weakly as the Voice rushed over to her. “What did you tell it?” she asked. “What did you do to scare that thing away?”

“Me? Nothing,” Tanda Nihara grunted in pain. “It just found something it wanted more. It will be back to finish the job, but by then I’ll be gone, so it won’t matter. I just wanted to free you first so you could get away before…”

The Goddess tried to keep going, but the pain took her breath away. For a moment, she just lay there struggling to breathe. 

“Shhh,” The Voice of reason whispered, holding the dying Goddess in her arms. “The beast is gone. You may yet recover.”

“Against that monstrosity? Hardly,” Tanda Nihara gasped. “But that doesn’t matter. As long as Tanda survives, that is all that matters. Where the river meets the sea, there will always be a harbor, and the city that commands it will forever be a jewel.”

She was hurt badly in her fight with the monstrosity that had torn down her walls. Her marble skin was crumbling, and maggots were squirming in the claw marks that marred her previously pristine body. The Voice was repulsed by them but would not let her die alone. After all, she might not die. Despite what had happened to her, she might yet live. She was a goddess, after all. 

The Goddess of the city stayed there like that, drifting in and out of consciousness while she babbled about her people and how she would rise again. She should survive this, the Voice realized as she looked at the night constellation, which was the city above them. It is not a mortal wound.

The fires still burned, but less than before. The city would recover in time, so long as the monstrosity did not return soon. The Walls would be rebuilt, the black marks would be painted over, and new mosaics and statues would be made to replace the ones that had been shattered. Still, despite that, Tanda Nihara did not wake. 

In fact, a few hours later, when the lights began to go out, plunging the Voice’s strange oubliette into darkness because the thin light of dawn did not reach here, something bizarre happened. Instead of healing, or even growing still and cold like the statue she appeared to be, the wounded woman simply started to dissolve into sand as the essence of her body was no longer enough to maintain it. 

That on its own would have been odd enough. The Voice of Reason was no true mage, and she could only barely feel the small surge of essence with her dead skin as the stone Goddess drifted away to the ether. Despite that, she was surprised when the dead flesh of the princess she was clothed in began to ossify. 

She stood up, worried she was about to be frozen in place. She blamed me for this, the Voice thought. Perhaps this is one final punishment. A prison within a prison. 

The idea of being frozen in place as a statue for eternity in a pocket dimension somewhere beyond the edge of the world was horrifying, but fortunately, that was not what happened. Even as her legs turned to stone, she found that she could bend them and move normally. 

That was a relief, but it was not an answer. Instead, all she could do was watch as the stone slid its way up and down her limbs and wait for whatever was going to happen next. She wasn’t even sure how she’d fight this thing if she wanted to. All she could do was approach one of the many full-length mirrors she kept in the palace, which was her gaudy cell, and watch as it consumed her.

It was only in the final step, when whatever was happening finally encased her beautiful face in a thin layer of marble, that she finally understood. The Goddess was dead, but the city still had enough strength, thanks to the power of its people, to power the divine, and it had chosen her to wield it. 

Was that simply because she was the most magical being left in the city? Was that because she’d been closest to the old Goddess when she’d passed away? The Voice of Reason had no idea. It might have simply been that she loved it most aesthetically. 

Whatever the case, she was overwhelmed with new information at that moment as she transcended from being the puppet of a dark god into a tiny godling herself. Suddenly, she could feel everything and everyone within her bounds, and she was unsurprised to discover that she liked it. 

A half-dead city needed a new Goddess like her; that only made sense. She would be a good steward, though, and help it to become beautiful once more. As she made that resolution, the gold that held her fractured porcelain form together started bleeding through her new stony skin, lending glimmers and streaks of gilded beauty to the whirling patterns of gray that had previously existed within the white marble while she looked on in the mirror. 

A moment ago, she’d looked so similar to the palace walls; now, she was something new. The Voice of Reason pursed her lips for a moment as she watched the gold blossom across her skin before deciding that she liked the change. It was her true nature, after all, and there was no use hiding it. The citizens of Tanda would know soon enough that she’d been reborn.

Ch. 204 - The Forge

The Devourer never stopped chewing deeper into the stone now. There had been some breakdowns at first and the occasional oddity to side-track Tenebroum, but that had been before it had felt the heat. It was getting close. It was certain of that. 

The rest of the world fell away as it bored deeper and deeper into the dark. If the All-Father still breathed and his dwarves were still sane, then they would have certainly found a thousand ways to stop this project. They were gone now, though, and nothing stood in the Lich’s way. 

Well, nothing except the terrible heat of the All-Father’s forges. For a time, the underground rivers that the Devourer had already intersected were enough to keep it cool while it did its job. Eventually, all of those boiled off, though, and drudges had to be ordered to pour water down the endless well one bucket at a time. It was no longer a straight tunnel, thanks to its meandering search for the heart of the world, but it was over a mile down now, and the work that was being done happened so distantly that it could no longer be heard even when the steam organ wasn’t playing. 

None of that distance made Tenebroum stop thinking about it, though, as its reserves dwindled. It found pockets of shadows in the depths sometimes now. It was deep enough for such hungry shades to flock and swarm, but they were nothing compared to the feast it was looking for, and it waited very impatiently for that day to arrive.  

Then, one day, it did. The Devour was doing the same thing it has always done, chewing slowly through hard igneous rock that was dense enough to resist even the touch of kobold claws and teeth that the worm of metal and bone wielded so efficiently, when it finally came upon a cavern like any other. 

Most of the periphery was filled with lava, and in the center was a forge too large for any man, let alone dwarf, to use. Tenebroum could barely exist close enough to see it because of the light, and in the same way, the Devourer was forced to retreat because of the heat as it began to smolder because of the heat. With a brief command, it pulled back its dark titan as well. 

Tenebroum was sure that the stone man could withstand the heat, but it was equally sure that the lead bindings that chained it to the Lich’s service could not. No, only the legion of rust might hope to brave these temperatures, and even then, they might not withstand them forever.

The Lich withdrew, though it wanted to scream in frustration at the turn of events. “You are dead!” it ragged at the dim memory deep inside its soul. “You are dead, and your forge fires should have long since grown cold!” 

No part of the All-Father responded to that, but then he couldn’t. He was now only one soul among an infinite chorus of fragments. The Lich would have to solve this itself. 

Fortunately, after a little thought, it decided that there was a fairly simple way to do just that. It would reroute the Oroza and drain the river into the depths, killing two birds with one stone. It would weaken his escaped pet even further if she yet lived, and it would extinguish the Forge of Creation so that it could get at the darkness of primordial chaos that was sealed somewhere behind it. 

This would take time, though. The last thing it wanted to do was flood its entire lair again, now that it had just been cleaned and rebuilt. Given all the work it had done to put this well of darkness to work, though, the groundwork had already been laid, even if accidentally. Slowly, over the course of hours, the plan came together in its vast mind, and as it did, its drudges dutifully got to work. 

It would use the disused river entrance that Oroza had entered so long ago, seal off all of the side passages, and construct a tunnel that led to the well of darkness, which it would reinforce at all critical junctions. Up until now, it had largely ignored many of the places where the walls met caverns, but now each of those represented a leak that would divert water off into the darkness instead of its real goal of putting out the forge father’s blasted fires once and for all. 

Work was slow in both directions, but then, it was in no hurry now. What it truly wanted was all but within its grasp. There was no one at these depths to trouble it any longer, and the surrounding area on the surface had become nothing but a blighted wasteland. That will only accelerate once the river dries up, it thought eagerly as it surveyed the blight that was everywhere now. It was rare to even see a bird or a rodent at this point, and though the earth around its tower was still stained black, for leagues in every direction after that, it had turned gray on this side of the river.

Tenebroum missed the days when it had lives in every direction that it could siphon from or snuff out as it willed, but it did not regret the path it had taken. The road to power was long and winding, and though the Lich never imagined that it would have to drill deep into the bowels of the underways, it all made sense in retrospect. Long ago, even before it had crawled from the swamp, it had grafted itself into the world, carving its secret name deep into the stones. So, if the world belonged to it, then surely all the darkness beneath it and all the night sky above it did as well, didn’t it?

Once I have achieved this, the mongrel won’t stand a chance against me, Tenebroum mused. I will flay its soul to nothing. I will torture it until it begs for the sort of kindness I showed to Krulm’venor and Kelvun. 

That thought brought to mind its dread tome, and the Lich quickly reoriented to bring its attention back to the book. It had been using it less and less since its phylactery had been sundered, but that didn’t mean it should neglect it entirely. “Show me everything we know about where Krulm’venor’s journey,” Tenebroum commanded the Skoeticnomikos. “After that, I want to see everywhere The Queen of Thorns has been and everywhere she might have gone next. My minions cannot have simply vanished.”

Tenebroum was too weak to seek them out just now, but soon it would have all the strength it would ever require, and it wanted its dark pantheon to be reassembled to witness that crowning moment. While it brooded, the book's pages filled faster and faster, with a long, meandering path deep beneath the world at a depth of almost half a mile. That was the tome’s best guess as to where Krulm’venor was. Since the dwarf required the Lich’s command to do anything at all, it must still be raging away in the Iron City, looking for things to destroy. 

The Lich wanted to believe that was true, but it was unconvinced. Such a fate would be too perfect, and nothing had been going right since the Worm had nearly ruined everything.

The Queen of Thorns and even the Voice of Reason were more concerning. They had much more free will than the truculent fire godling, and neither of them had come home. That, more than anything else, indicated a real problem. Either the loss of their connection to it had snuffed them out like a candle, or they had decided that they enjoyed their freedom.

The former would be tragic, as such a fate would indicate that most of its vast armies had all but dispersed in its absence. The latter, though… such a thing would be unforgivable. If it discovered that they yet existed when its current goal was in hand… well, it would devour them screaming and replace them with someone more loyal. 

Tenebroum brooded on these thoughts as it stared at the map of all the woods its dark nature Goddess had already subjugated. It noted that there was nothing anywhere close to Constantinal that had not been conquered by her. If those territories no longer belonged to it, and such powers were flowing to her instead, then she might be a mighty foe in her own right. Its concern grew as it began to contemplate various cholorium-based contingencies it could enact in the worst case.

From there, its minds spiraled out into a dozen different directions. With nothing to do but wait, the Lich attended to dozens of minor tasks and half-forgotten experiments, chiefest among which were putting together the many shattered bodies it had so carefully created back together. With any luck, it would never need them, but that wouldn’t stop the constructs from standing there in mute testament to its glory, just as its honor guard had done for so many decades. 

Time slowed to a crawl for the Lich as it lost itself in a thousand petty pursuits. It studied its dark titan for some clue as to what its alien, broken mind was thinking, it poured over the Skoeticnomikos for some clue as to where its minions might be, and each night, it studied the stars, looking for weak points in the patterns that separated it from the limitless sea of darkness. 

Then, just like that, it was time to open the floodgates. Tenebroum had been so lost in its other thoughts and schemes that it had not noticed the passage of time. The Lich turned and reflected, viewing the entire system one more time and noting how like a living thing its giant earthen body had become. It now had a mind, a nervous system, channels for air and water, and, of course, all of that was built for the single purpose of its own survival. 

It had grown too grand in scale for anyone else save another god to understand it, but it did not care. It wanted nothing from mortals except for their bodies and souls, and soon it would have them. With that thought in mind, the Lich opened the floodgates and released an endless torrent of water into the depths. Soon, it would have everything, and it would never go hungry again.