Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 132-133 (Patreon)

Ch. 132 - Bread Crumbs

Ghroshian was not aware of the Templar when he first entered Rahkin, but when the Lich informed them the following night, they were not surprised. They had felt the menace from the moment the man had walked through the gate and scurried to find new, deeper hiding places for many of the rats that made up its greater whole.

It was an old scent. The scent of a predator. However, because everyone had said that Siddrim was dead and gone, it had been hard for them to reconcile that baleful aura with the Lord of Light.

It was him, though, and as soon as the Lich spoke those words, the rat god trembled. The fear only grew stronger when it was given the terrible order that they feared most in the moments after that.

“You are to follow him,” the darkness whispered to him from the mouth of its incapacitated reaver. “You are to watch all that the man with glowing eyes says and does as in this cursed city! We spent the winter denying them food and hope, and now, in a single day, the citizens are renewed. This is an outrage!”

They agreed, of course, but Ghrosian would have said anything to the Lich to avoid becoming the target of that rage. Its wraiths had already abducted more than a few rats that made up the pieces of their soul, and even without a physical manifestation here to enforce its will, the hungry God dared not oppose the thing that had become its master.

Of course, they dare not get too close to the specter of Siddrim’s light, either. They remembered too well how it burned, even around corners and through doors. Those terrifying memories were some of the oldest, most vivid parts of themself, and they had a feeling that they had not been quite so fearful in the days before that God taught them humility.

Still, the twin fears forced them to agree, at least to a very small degree, and that night, they sent dry, desiccated mice into the walls of the palace to observe what they could and report back. They would not get too close, but they would do enough so that they would not earn a punishment either. They had few enough bodies after the reaver had practically hunted them to extinction, and they would need time to grow from hundreds to tens of thousands all over again.

Getting into the palace was easy enough these days. Everywhere except the kitchens, of course. Thanks to all their hard work, the places in the city that might contain food were the most tightly guarded.

Everything else, though? The movement of dead armies beyond the walls attacked all the human attention, and since the reaver’s nightly attacks had been brought to an end weeks ago, the guards and the mages focused their attention on the darkness outside the walls.

The palace was an empty place these days, though, after the King and his sons had died. There were no longer banquets or parties, and even if there had been food to spare, it would have been unlikely to change things.

Why should it? According to every corpse they had feasted on, from the high-born to the gutter scum, the queen was in perpetual mourning after the death of nearly her whole family. The fact that they’d never really found out who did it and simply hung a few criminals as servants of the dark only twisted the knife.

Ghroshian didn’t mind, though. They enjoyed twisting the knife. Torment and grief were both fine spices for rotting meat, and any corpse that came from the palace these days had at least a hint of both.

So they would have enjoyed this little expedition as their mice fanned out through the grand hall and the private chambers of the royal family in search of their quarry and other tasty secrets, were it not for those terrible eyes.

When the mouse first saw them in the private dining room of the royal family, it retreated almost immediately, and it took all of the hungry God’s willpower to force that small tendril of itself to return to the tiny crack in the corner of the room where it could see the Templar talking with the queen and her generals about the cities defenses.

This was exactly the sort of conversation that Ghroshian should have been listening to, but it couldn’t. It couldn’t focus on anything but those twine golden eyes, which were brighter than any of the other lanterns in the room.

The man sat there with salt and paper stubble and slate gray hair. He even looked somewhat frail without his armor on, but all that they could see were those two terrible eyes sending out beams of light like twin lighthouses.

Once, when the man briefly turned in Ghroshian’s direction, the mouse that had been occupying simply died on the spot. The man hadn’t even been the one to do it. It simply cut off the limb rather than risk that the Templar’s gaze might fall on even the tiniest part of them.

Cursing itself for what the Lich would do to it if it found out, the rat God quickly rushed two more pieces of itself to the room, sending one to the same crack that already held one mouse corpse and sending the other to a cabinet on the far wall that it had long ago picked clean of anything edible.

Once there, it forced itself to sit there with their eyes closed and listen to the words coming from the humans. Even with the vengeful glow so close that it might be able to be seen, it forced itself to listen and remember as they discussed the parts of the wall most likely to be attacked and how what they needed to do most was reinforce the harbor because the dead did not need to breathe.

It was only after the Templar asked to be allowed to visit the Grand Temple, which had since been sealed, and the queen opted to send her daughter to accompany the man, that the rat god allowed the fear to overflow it.

It was alone in the room now. Nothing had harmed it, and there was no reason to fear, but it could sense the danger, and it waited for a very long time before belatedly sending more of themself to the Grand Temple to await the Templar’s arrival.

That spot, at least, was safe enough. The light had long since left it, and it had since eaten the rugs, the books and scrolls, and every tapestry except those that were hung by chains too high up for it to reach.

The place had long since ceased to be holy, and that had been a great comfort to the rat god since its return to unlife. If Siddrim could be snuffed like an ordinary candle, then there was nothing that would stop it from feasting on the world until there was nothing left.

Well, nothing but the Lich, of course. It was not inclined to cross anyone that could defeat the Lord of Light, though, and even if there was something strangely familiar about the darkness, it—

Their thoughts stilled immediately as the guards forced open the door for the first time in months, and two people entered the darkened chapel. The glowing eyes of the man made their indities unmistakable, and all eight parts of themself froze in fear as the two humans made their way through the colonnade and toward the altar.

“And to think, even in this sorry state, it is still probably the grandest temple to Siddrim left in the whole kingdom,” the Templar said, gesturing widely at the splintered wood of broken stained glass in so many of the decorative elements.

Ghroshian had never once tried to evaluate this room as beautiful or not, but it could see how a human might. It was a wide open space, and the thick pillars held up the massive vaulted ceiling that made even this muted conversation easy to hear. In the light of day, it was probably quite bright, too, thanks to the multicolored windows that were plastered all along the southern walls.

It had no interest in such things, though, and didn’t let the stray thought distract it for even a moment as it focused on the people as well as the words they were speaking. They were talking about the nature of darkness, and the Princess seemed to have some terrible secret she wanted to confess, but they were more interested in how much its hunger had taken a toll on her previously lovely body.

She had been beautiful once, but between the lack of food and whatever it was she felt guilty about, she was little more than skin and bone. As sixteen sets of eyes observed her from different corners of the room, Ghroshian couldn’t help but wonder how soon it would be able to feast on the marrow of her bones.

“I… I had to, you understand. It was terrible, but he was going to—” the Princess said.

“Enough,” the Templar interrupted. “I am not your confessor; do you understand that? These terrible eyes allow me to see everything you have done, but I cannot punish you for it, do you understand? All of that will be between you and whatever God judges each of us in Siddrim’s absence when we pass over to the other side.”

“But—” she persisted.

“But nothing,” the Templar said, shaking his head. “Let me ask you this. Did you do the things that you did for your own benefit or for the light?”

“I had to fight the darkness,” she pleaded. “All who seek to ally with evil or placate them are evil themselves.”

“Correct,” he agreed. “Then you have nothing to fear.”

Ghroshian wasn’t quite sure what it was they were talking about, but they were intrigued. Nothing tasted better than a secret. At least nothing that wasn’t still warm and bleeding.

This had the taste of something older, and it desperately wanted to know more, but the holy man kept cutting her off. That was just as well, unfortunately, because their frustration was doing an excellent job of counteracting their collective fear as they watched the scene.

“That isn’t enough,” she whined. “I did something terrible. I demand to be punished for it, and you’re the only one left in the kingdom that can grant me that!”

The older man sighed. “Do you think I haven’t had to do terrible things? Sometimes, the light requires that and more. Do you think that these men haven’t also had to do terrible things to preserve the balance? Perhaps if we’d all done more, there would still be one sun in the sky instead of four.”

As he spoke and gestured at the men in the windows who were presumably saints or at least other holy men, a strange thing began to happen. They started to illuminate. One at a time, the panes began to glow. Worse than that, some small part of the consecration was returning to the ancient tile floor.

Ghroshian could feel their tiny feet beginning to burn at the unwelcome sensation, and most of their bodies fled. Even so, though, one remained to try to see how this would play out.

The Templar was merely lecturing her on the nature of morality and the terrible deeds that each of these men had done for the greater good. As he spoke, though, candleless candelabras were relighting, rays of a non-existent sun were streaming through windows that no longer seemed to be missing glass, and even the thick coat of dust that shrouded the entire room had disappeared.

“That’s nothing though,” she declared. “I did so much worse than that. I—”

Ghroshian strained to listen, but even as she moved to finally spill her secret, their final mouse body burst into holy white flames, and it was unable to make out whatever terrible burden it was that this woman was holding. It would tell all this to the Lich, of course. Hopefully, it would be able to make heads or tales of both the Princess's disposition and the way that the temple could return to life like that, even for a moment of grandeur.

Ch. 133 - Total Eclipse

When the stars once again aligned on the equinox, and Lunaris made the call to everyone, Oroza knew she could not ignore it, much as she would like to. She had too much to share about the evil that was currently drowning the world from one sea to the other.

It had even started to assault her river again with bizarre poison monsters that had been dredged from the deep and altered. So, even with the scars of her recent battle with a cholorium-infused squid serpent she’d torn to pieces still fresh on her serpentine body, she made the long swim into the darkness of the night sky and joined the gods at their conclave.

She felt much better than she had time, even if some part of her was still ashamed to be seen by her fellows. Despite the fact that her constant fighting and the salt water that the darkness had flooded her river with had done her no favors, she was grateful that she at least felt clean now. The scales of her river dragon form were still patchy and lusterless, but every scar she earned in her endless war with her former captor was a badge of honor that she would wear with pride.

As she approached the moon, she briefly wondered how the Lunaris could be both the person that carried the moon across the sky as well as a place where she could also visit, but she didn’t think too much of it. Those deep thoughts were for someone else to decide. Whether the moon was a shield, a lantern, or a place, it did not matter to her. All that mattered was that here was the only place where the people who could actually do something about the ongoing tragedy dwelled.

When she arrived in the divine amphitheater, it was more crowded than it had been the last time, but even so, she could see many seats were empty, and the pattern of those absences disturbed her. Nature spirits like her seemed the most likely to be missing, followed by the other small gods of places like cities.

None of that surprised her. The world was on fire with war.

Despite the absences, Oroza could see the scars on so many of her fellows easily enough. Hers were obvious as well, no matter her form. As a river dragon, they took the form of dark scales and long scars, but even as she turned back into a woman in a dress of grey spray and white foam, the sudden streaks of grey in her hair were easy enough to see.

For centuries, she hadn’t aged a day thanks to the river’s constant power, but now that she was being poisoned in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, she was withering. She doubted she’d be much good at fighting anything in a decade at the way things were currently unfolding, but she couldn’t let that bother her now. There was too much to do and too much to say.

Only the greatest of the gods seemed untouched by the war. Siddrim’s seat still sat empty at the high table, but Niama, Lunaris, the All-Father, the veiled goddess of death, fox-faced Ronndin, along with the other animalistic gods, and even the twin gods of sea and storms were in attendance.

As their strange meeting started, much of the discussion was on how far the damage had spread. The Lich had stained much of the continent with its long shadow. Worse, it had stopped simply killing all who opposed it and was developing a terrible sort of flock in its own right.

So, even while its destruction weakened the gods that supported the natural order, it grew and strengthened, and all the while, the world grew emptier and emptier. Niama was happy enough to see the wild places starting to reclaim so many fallow fields, but even she acknowledged the need for humanity.

“The children of the forest can never hope to grow to the numbers needed to fight this monster,” she confessed.

Still, others had better news. Lunaris promised them that even now, there was a swarm of stars working hard to reunite and herd his horses so that they could once again be yoked to a new chariot the All-Father was building, which was already nearing completion.

The god of dwarves and craftsmen seemed to be working on a great many plans, but each time one of them was talked about, the stone man stopped the conversation. “By the ancestors, woman, these are not secrets to be shared yet. Not until all is in fruition!”

It was frustrating. Most of the gods in attendance felt that way. Each of them was working on their own small plan or their own secret vengeance, but because they were so used to it, few seemed inclined to share them. There were mentions of a secret weapon here and a clue about the history of the monster they faced there, but each mention would be trampled on by disagreement or impulses of secrecy.

All of them argued for a time about where the need for help was greatest and which part of the world was going to fall next. The All-Father confessed that even his blow by unleashing the Hammer of Banath had done little good despite how many of the Lich’s dread servants it had crushed.

There just didn’t seem to be anything stopping the darkness’s advance. Even their greatest victories only slowed the thing down. All they could agree on was that the next city to fall was likely Rhakin. Despite the heroes they’d sent to try to help with that growing siege, the storm clouds that gathered around that doomed city grew ever darker.

When it was at last Oroza’s turn to speak, she shared all she knew. She had nothing half so brutal as Niama’s forest ambush against the darkness to share, but she described how it had almost trapped her again and was willing to bend whole geographies and ruin entire regions just to get its way.

A forest being burned to ashes and a river being poisoned were both terrible tragedies, so the great marble amphitheater was nearly silent when the terrible laughter began to ring out from the stands. As one, the Gods turned to see what mockery this was and saw only the slender form of the dryad Breeandwyn.

She was a frail, sickly little thing compared to the woman she’d been before the Lich had burned down her wood for daring to ally with Lunaris and Niama, and for a moment, Oroza’s heart went out to her as she realized the poor woman must be sobbing under the weight of despair. Oroza knew that pain well.

She wasn’t, though. The dryad stood, and as she did, Oroza could see that she was definitely laughing. She thought the other goddess’s mind must have finally given way, but as soon as her laughter subsided and she started to speak, Oroza began to transform back into her true form.

“All of my enemies here in one place, and yet you can agree on nothing!” the Lich gloated through someone else’s mouth. “This is why you have lost so much and why you will lose the rest. Do you understand that?”

Some of the warrior gods were already standing and unsheathing their weapons, as they understood the danger, but Oroza was faster. She was already halfway there to where the thing that had once been, Breeandwyn stood, mocking them. She was still too late, though.

“That fiend must be destroyed!” Lunaris shouted, but by the time she stood and denounced it, the thorns were already growing.

The dryad started to come apart. What was a woman one moment became a flowering plant, and each blossom unfolded into a yawning void of infinite darkness. That horrible sight unraveled further into a thicket made of shadows and plants so dark they drank even every last ounce of light.

They grew fantastically, and even as Oroza approached the dark oasis and began to tear into it, they’d already involved several of the small gods that had been sitting near her. Phlioiel, the goddess of spinners and other crafts, had been sitting next to Ferden, the young god of shepherds and herds, along with a few other nature goddesses from the same region as Breeandwyn.

All of them disappeared into the darkness, leaving only the Lich’s echoing laughter and taunting words behind. She bit and tore and the impossible flora even as it cut into the gaps between her hardened scales. Such pain meant nothing to Oroza, though. She’d had much worse.

It was only when the shadowy abominations of things that might have once been animals began to pour their way out of the tiny thicket that the fight was truly joined. Oroza had slain many undead at this point. Few, except for Siddrim, could probably have exceeded her in that regard, but that’s not what these were.

These were terrible shadow monsters that she could barely harm while the chill of their every attack went right through her scales. Even that she might have been able to deal with were the forms not so abominable. These were not wolves and bears; they were elk with snakes for horns and foxes with mouths as large as the rest of their body. There were birds with two heads and five wings, along with bulls with horns bigger than their own emaciated bodies. The whole thing was a singularity of pure madness.

The flaming swords or glowing claws of her peers had more luck. Despite that, though, Oroza could feel the brambles engulfing her long, sinuous body like bladed ropes. Despite how hard she fought, she was ensnared, like several other gods and goddesses, and she was slowly being drawn into the maw of whatever abomination it was that the Lich had unleashed.

She could feel it, grazing her mind and taunting her even as she struggled and switched from trying to kill it to simply trying to flee from it. Welcome home, my pet, it whispered in her mind, making her skin crawl as she bucked and raged against it.

That was when Lunaris finally joined the fray. She never moved from the dias at the center of the amphitheater. Instead, she watched and drew on her power for almost a minute before releasing it as a single lance of light that wasn’t much larger than Oroza’s scaled form.

Despite its intensity, it didn’t hurt her. Instead, it felt warm and comforting as the light passed through Oroza and the other warrior gods, dissolving the chains that bound them, along with a good portion of the terrible thicket that had appeared so violently.

It would have been better if the light had banished the shadows. That wouldn’t have given her nightmares. Instead, as the shadows withered under the moon's intense gaze, they exposed the physical form of these monsters, which were stitched together from an uncountable number of people and animal parts for a moment before those, too, burst into greasy violet flames amidst the moon’s onslaught. It was vile and made Oroza flashback to her time in the heart of the swamp dragon, freezing her in place for a moment even as her allies continued to fight.

The moon goddess did not strike at it again. Instead, she stood by while the rest of the gods pounded, cleaved, and chopped it into ruin. The fight took several minutes more, but by the time it was done, there was no trace of the darkness, the dryad, or another half a dozen Gods and Goddesses that had been there moments before.

“How could this have happened!” a demigoddess of song cried.

No one had any answers for her. Indeed, most of them were thinking the same thing. Oroza was sure of it. The moon and the goddess that carried across the sky each night existed to literally ward away evil. If it could somehow make its way even to here, then what were they supposed to do about that?