Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 134-135 (Patreon)

Ch. 134 - Violation

As Tenebroum watched the latest skirmish preparing to unfold outside the walls of the capital, it had trouble focusing on the details. It wasn’t because it was upset that the Templar, with the light in his eyes, had made it unharmed into the city or even that they had as of yet been unable to find where the man had sheltered for so long. Even the growing light behind Rahkin’s walls wasn’t enough to make the Lich too angry.

That the man had failed to fall into the trap that the Lich had prepared for him so long ago was disappointing but not unexpected. He did not seem to be half so weak as his squire had been. Still, even this latest twist was unlikely to deny it the city. The man had not been able to rally his thousands-strong Templar army against it at its nadir, and it was much stronger now than it had been before.

It was just how well the events had played out on the moon the other day. That was enough to make all of this seem trivial.

The gods themselves are afraid of me, it pondered to itself in equal parts contentment and gloating.

After that, as delicious as the feasts of the battlefield were, any victory tonight simply wouldn’t compare. After all, last night, it had dined on the flesh of the divine for the first time in a long time. Nothing compared to that.

Not even victory, it had struck by sending real fear into the hearts of the gods that were arrayed against it. The Lich had spent months growing that corrupted dryad in Constantinal, and for most of that time, she was a scrawny, withered thing that hung on the edge of life and death. It was only shortly before the nature Goddess had called her to the conclave that the dryad looked like she might survive, and the Lich had seized on the opportunity and stitched a truly nasty surprise inside of her.

It had intended to leave the relic it had embedded inside of its wooden servant as a measure of last resort when some God or another detected its presence. Only none of them had. His construct had simply been pitied by Niama for the terrible fate that Krulm’venor had inflicted on her, and she had been escorted to a seat so that she could speak her words of warning toward the end of their little meeting.

Sitting behind her eyes, the Lich had soaked up all it could from that meeting. After all, while killing or even kidnapping a god would be an incredible victory, spying on the whole affair and leaving while its enemies were none the wiser would have been even better. At least, that’s what it had thought until it saw her there.

It knew that Oroza yet lived, and though even the sight of her was enough to make its anger boil over, it resisted the urge immediately. The Lich was content to note her weakness and gloat over her eventual demise. When she revealed secret after secret that belonged to it, though, that was when it grew truly enraged and changed its mind.

The Lich could not yet tell if its efforts to poison the All-Father’s soul were bearing fruit or that God was naturally a curmudgeonly sort; with a dwarf, it could well be either. Either way, it approved of the stone man’s need for secrecy, as well as the way it hamstrung all the other gods as they tried desperately to get help for their own concerns while desperately trying to frame it as working together.

They were like a gaggle of panicked chickens trying desperately to avoid slaughter, which was exactly the opposite of the way that it worked with its slowly developing pantheon. In the grand scheme of things, Tenebroum was not yet a full-fledged deity, but even now, some of its servants rivaled the weakest of the true demigods, and every single one of them was permanently and completely loyal to it. Even those like Groshian, the long imprisoned God of hunger and rats, was loyal to the darkness, if only because they feared the Lich’s strength, and for now, that was enough.

Once this war was done, layer more enchantments to make that loyalty unbreakable, but all of that would have to wait for more urgent things, like the Lich’s sudden, overpowering need to taunt these fools and show them just how powerless they really were. Later, it might regret it. It knew that even as it whispered the final words to unseal the complicated puzzle box that connected to a room in its inner sanctum, six full floors beneath the earth, in the bottommost realm of its lair.

It was there that the portal opened, and it spewed vitriol and hate at the assembled gods and goddesses. Even as the item unfolded from a dull metal cube into a delicate origami flower, it channeled a massive burst of dark essence into its bearer whether she wanted it or not.

None of the deities that were about to face the consequences of that would have any idea how hard the Lich’s servants had labored to create that delicate link where two far-away spaces were, for a moment, a single place. It was the realization of insights that it gained when studying the nature of this world and the way it fit into the large cosmos, but even so, it was a fragile thing with tidal forces and distortion ripples that would have been enough to kill any mortal transmitted in such a fashion.

Tenebroum did not have to worry much about the consequences of life and death, though. In this case, the result of the violent essence surge was explosive, instantly killing its fragile dryad, though it would be several minutes before she knew that. Instead of dying outright, her body mutated into a spiraling cancerous mass of impossible vegetation that was powered by pure darkness rather than any natural impulse.

To the Lich, it was a violent work of art, and it savored the moment even as the battle was joined. Why shouldn’t it? Despite the thicket only being ten or fifteen feet on a side, the interior was close to infinite, and the perfect spiraling shapes would never occur in nature.

Any creature that found its way inside of it, divine or otherwise, would be lost forever. Well, it would be lost until Tenebroum collapsed the strange singularity, dumping whoever it captured into the same room where its shadowy cast-offs and rejects had come from. The object itself was only a gate. It was those creatures it relied on to do the real damage to those in attendance.

One moment, the Gods that sat around its cursed dryad Breeandwyn were whispering amongst themselves about what could be done, and the next, they were swallowed up by its dark, lacerating vines. It was a sight to behold, and the Lich would forever remember the sight of those beautiful women screaming even as they were dragged into its large and growing maw by bladed vines. They would never be seen again, at least not in any form that anyone was likely to recognize.

Part of the Lich wished it had tried to capture Lunaris itself with such a trap, but it knew that the odds of this working on a Goddess with real power, let alone powers over light and magic, were slim to none.

Capturing half a dozen different minor deities for later vivisection could not be called a failure by any stretch of the imagination, though, and watching all those around its dark beachhead struggle with the monsters that poured out of that well of darkness was more than satisfying as well. Tenebroum’s one regret when the whole thing was done was that it had not been able to pull Oroza over the threshold.

That would have made the whole thing perfect, it decided fondly, as the Lich looked out the eyes of a swarm of ravens at the Walls of Rahkin while it viewed the skirmishes that its dark Paragon was engaged in on a nearly nightly basis. They were an ongoing process that typically consisted of one or two fronts of low-quality drudges and worn-down war zombies to attract the defender’s attention while some new abomination or another damaged a wall or wreaked havoc from an unexpected quarter. Today, it was a frontal assault to test out the limits of their mage’s range while specters assaulted the smallest gate on the northern side of the city.

If that went well, they would let in a unit of death knights who would do real damage as they fought their way toward the city’s largest granary, but Tenebroum was not confident it would be successful. The only way it was likely to take this city was in a large-scale battle where it committed everything in the area to overwhelm the defenders, and it was unwilling to do that as long as it and its general suspected they still had trucks up their sleeve.

So instead, they opted to inflict a death by a thousand cuts until the defenders’ edge were suitably dulled. Often, very little was accomplished, but sometimes, it found a vulnerability and wreaked true havoc. That had been the case last week when it had sent a brigade of zombies across the ocean floor and into the city’s harbor at night.

Its Paragon had given it a two-thirds chance of losing the whole expedition to an ocean god or another spirit like Oroza, but no one had noticed, and instead, the sodden zombies had come ashore without issue. That, in turn, led to the damage and destruction of dozens of vessels and hundreds of deaths before the city watch had finally vanquished the last of them.

Repeat performances hadn’t worked any better than this frontal assault was working now. Even as it watched through the eyes of its flock, it could see that the dregs that were assaulting the gate tonight were already being mowed down with a mixture of arcane magic and holy might.

Every attack was a small victory, though. Tonight, it would allow the Lich and its minions to better understand the range and capabilities of the dwindling defenders, and in the case of its recent battle for the harbor, it had forced the humans to station guards all around the harbor, now only further stretched their already dwindling defenses.

As it watched a watchman with light in his eyes hold back the specters long enough for reinforcements to arrive, denying the death knights entry and forcing them to retreat, the Lich sighed. In time, the city would break, and the Lich was confident of that. No matter what magic Brother Faerbar brought to wield against it, it would not be enough to stop what was coming

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Ch. 135 - Breakwater

As the third sunset, Brother Faerbar began his mass to the men that would join him on the walls tonight. He did it as much to put steel in their spines as to feel a fraction of the light he missed so much, though.

The way that the broken stained glass would glow and the darkness would be forced out of the stone structure as he recited the old words was a balm to his spirit. After seeing how few men here had taken up the light, he needed it.

As battered and looted as it was, the Grand Temple of Rahkin was still probably in better shape than the spiritual landscape of the city’s inhabitants. Despite how many hours he’d spend scrubbing its floors between meeting with the Queen and her generals to discuss the city’s defense, it looked no better than it had when he arrived, except for in moments like this when the divine gave all of them a taste of what all of them had missed for so long.

For a moment, all of them together here in fellowship didn’t have to see the timeworn stone or the threadbare walls. They didn’t even have to see the dull red light of Balzaar as he galloped alone across the heavens. Instead, they could see the world as it had been, with white light, veined marble, and blue skies.

It was the way things should have always been. Those were high standards, though. In truth, even the holiest men he’d known were far from perfect. Less than half the men in Siddrimar had been devout enough to catch Brother Faerbar’s fervor, and outside those hallowed walls, he had not expected to find even half that much devotion.

Still, in the sea of eyes that looked at him as he lectured on the fight to come, less than one man in ten looked at him with the blazing gaze that he’d come to expect as the true blessing of the light. All of them looked at him with rapt devotion, and some even with fear, but those things were not enough.

He couldn’t say what was required beyond righteousness, but he didn’t need to. There was no time left for speculating now. That thing was on the move. Whether your place was at the altar or the gutter no longer mattered. At this point, Brother Faerbar no longer cared if you were rich or poor or even a man or a woman. Stained souls could defend the lives of their fellow man almost as well as those with pure ones, as far as he was concerned.

All that mattered was that you could hold a sword and stand in the face of the devil because it was coming for all of them. The scouts had been reporting it for days. Further dungeons were emptying, and nearer dungeons were filling as the dead shuffled their forces and prepared for something larger than usual.

Would they actually try to breach the walls for good this time? He wondered.

Rahkin was the capital. It had walls between walls and districts that could be individually defended, so all might not be lost even if the main gate was breached, but once the dead could roam the catacombs at will, it would probably be over.

Brother Faerbar had learned that lesson more than once. Above ground, it would be a bloody battle, but it would still be a battle. Below it, though. That, it would be a slaughter.

Those terrible memories of those he’d lost in the Lich’s lair were almost enough to shake him free of his blessing, and the Templar paused for a moment to steady himself mid-sentence.

“The light will not prevent your death,” he started again, “But know that your death, should it come to that, will save the lives of countless others. More importantly than any of our lives, though, are our immortal souls.”

He drew his sword, willing it to flare with light to better drive this point home to the hundreds of kneeling men who were listening to his words before the battle to come. “For as long as we hold this city, you and the souls of everyone you love are safe, but if it falls, then all of us are damned, and you shall spend an eternity slaving away for the monster we fight, becoming one more foot soldier in its terrible army. Is that what you want?”

“NO!” some of the men yelled in unison.

It was less forceful than Brother Faerbar would have liked, so he continued. “And what of those you love, not just those that are living now, but your children and your parents who are already buried. Do you want this darkness to unearth them as well? Because it will, it—”

“NO!” they cried out louder.

This time, almost all of them joined the call, and it brought a grim smile to his face. He understood too well. The idea of your own death was a terrible, frightening thing, but it was his brothers' deaths that haunted him at night.

Not now, though. Right now, the light was too bright for any darkness in his heart, and it had grown all the more powerful since he’d come here for one simple reason: those souls that he vouchsafed fueled his own powers in the same way that they would if they ended up in the hands of the darkness instead.

This was something he hadn’t fully realized in the liar of evil while he was trying to beat back the mishappen hordes of the damned, but his time in Jordan’s manor house. That was one of the main reasons he’d had to come here. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to feel the souls of the children he’d raised in the light slip through his fingers either. It was bigger than that. If Siddrim had given him such a gist, then he needed to use it where there were the most people possible.

That was the only way to give all of this meaning and the dead purpose. He didn’t share any of this with the warriors before him, though. Instead, Brother Faerbar blessed them and sent them on their way.

Unit after unit, mostly led by the remaining noblemen with their fine armor and their magical blades, came up to him one at a time to receive the Templar’s blessing, but he would not be joining them. Not tonight, anyway. He would let the mages that the Collegium handle the monsters that mere men couldn’t instead. He was needed elsewhere.

For too long, the dark forces had been probing every weakness that Rahkin had to offer. For week after week, they’d sent various monstrosities against every wall and gate, and if the monster they were facing was making such a big deal of the frontal attack, then Brother Faerbar was fairly certain that the true battle would be elsewhere.

It was only then he took a much smaller group with him to the sheltered harbor that was the weak link in Rhakin’s chain of defenses. In every other direction, walls and towers held back enemies, but in this one, there was only water, and that seemed less effective.

At this point, he was unsure if Oroza worked for the darkness they fought or opposed it. He’d seen evidence for both. He hoped that the other Gods and Goddesses were on the side of man, though, otherwise, they were screwed.

The attack on the walls started as soon as the fourth sun, Pheadron, ran below the far horizon. Brother Faerbar could hear it distantly, but he wasn’t concerned, at least at first. Instead, he and the thirty men he’d selected waited in an abandoned tavern just close enough to see the waterfront.

They didn’t have to wait too long. An hour after the fight started, but several hours before midnight, the first sodden zombies began to wade onshore. They were pitiful, waterlogged things with rusted armor. The Templar didn’t even need to dispatch them himself. While he fought, he kept the visor of his battered helmet down and hid the light that might frighten larger prey while he waited to see what would follow them.

The things that came next were a real horror show. First, there were corpses that had been stitched together out of several people until they were two times the size of a normal man, and the ones that followed them had been crafted from so many limbs that they looked more like crabs than people.

Brother Faerbar joined the fight as soon as these abominations broke the surface, but only because the dregs he’d chosen to fight alongside him would have broken and fled if he hadn’t. They were horrifying and strong, but they were not difficult to kill.

He was just beginning to doubt his certainty that the true battle would take place far from the walls of the city when it finally broke the surface and began to glide toward them. When it reached them, its tentacles wrapped around the docks. It didn’t climb them, though. Instead, it smashed them to flinders.

The Templar wasn’t sure exactly what it was in the dark, but even as he ignited his sword to try to understand, he realized that he'd probably made a mistake. He could see the monstrosity towering above him like the brow of a ship now, but so could the men fighting beside him, and several of them broke immediately.

Some part of him didn’t even blame them as he called to everyone else, “Rally to me! Do not let them establish a beachhead and take the docks!”

The last time that Brother Faerbar had fought something like this, it was Oroza’s leviathan, deep beneath Fallravea. This one was worse, though. That thing had been a mockery made from cast-off human limbs, but for this, someone had found the half-eaten corpse of a true kraken and reanimated the thing. The fact that they’d used other random bodies and carcasses to make it whole made it that much more disgusting.

Here, a person had been used instead of the foot-like fin that belonged there, and there snakes and giant eels replaced tentacle sections that had been bitten away or rotted off. In addition to that, everywhere there was a hole large enough to be a structural concern, it was riveted over with metal plates or thick, scaly hides from who knew what.

None of that mattered right now, though. What mattered were the writhing tentacles that could just as easily crush a man as sink a ship or bring down a building. For the first few minutes, it was stuck at the water's edge, and for every trunk-like tentacle he removed with his glowing blade, it slew a few of his men.

Once it managed to drag itself ashore, though, the destruction only got worse. That was for two reasons. The first was that now, every time it failed to strike down Brother Faerbar, it would crush a wagon or knock down some part of a building. The other reason was the zombies it began to vomit up, though.

These slime-covered monstrosities were heaved up past its three rows of sword-like teeth. They weren’t the sort that tried to fight you, though. They were the sort that exploded. Brother Faerbar found that out the moment he cleaved one and two and, the alchemical contraption ignited.

One moment, he was the brightest light on the waterfront, and the next, he was bathed in green fire as the corpse he had just cleaved in two exploded, riddling him with poisoned shrapnel for the second time in his life and knocking him back into the ruins of what had once been someone’s home.

It was a painful blow but not so terrible that he couldn’t rise to his feet once more. Brother Farbar yanked out the largest pieces of metal that had penetrated his armor with his free hand, and then he leveled his sword back at his enemy and mentally steeled himself to return to the fight.