Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 140-141 (Patreon)

Ch. 140 - All Night’s Falling

When the sun set on Rahkin that day, Tenebroum vowed it would be the last time that anyone there would live to see it. Even as it reviewed the situation on both sides with its dark Paragon and discussed the intelligence that the rats had offered about the mages and their schemes, it could see that a frontal assault was probably not the optimal move, but it no longer cared.

Just as it had refused to let the first village it had ever devoured slip away into the light, it would not let this city do so either. Not even if it was the last and the largest stronghold in the area. The Lords of the realm had refused to bend, and now they would be broken.

Though the walls still stood, they were brittle things, and the men that stood upon them no longer wore armor with the matching heraldry of its enemy. Instead of professional soldiers, half of the defenders now were simply whoever was strong enough to fight, wearing whatever would fit. 

Even with those signs of desperation, though, the light inside was growing, not ebbing. Even as its general assured it that victory was imminent, the Lich did not feel comforted by its endless simulations and counter stratagems.

“With a few more waves of attacks to redirect the defenders to the north, we could free up the gates and the southern approaches,” the dark man assured him. The Lich did not doubt that was so, but even after listening to all of that, it still pronounced its judgment coldly in the thing's mind. “No. This will end tonight. Rally your forces accordingly.”

For the longest time, the Lich had kept its dark Paragon in the bodies of random, broken-down drudges. This was both because it did not need more than that and also because Tenebroum wanted to be sure that its servant could never hope to challenge it. However, with the unpredictable state of the battlefield, it had finally built an appropriate body for the spirit, adding it to the tiny pantheon that was growing in its shadows, one creation at a time. 

Now, instead of a decaying skeleton, the Paragon animated a set of carefully inscribed mismatched plate mail made up of pieces taken from the generals and heroes it had already outwitted. There was no head or even helmet, though. The Lich would not grant it the ability to hide its expression any more than its thoughts. So, its artificial, patchwork spirit stood there, encased and exposed simultaneously as it flickered in violet and cyan flames in the mockery of a real man. 

Though Tenebroum had certainly built its general to be capable of fighting if necessary by using all that, it had learned from Krlum’venor and its shadow drake, that was not the intent. The intent was just to make it capable of defending itself from the strange attacks the humans sometimes surprised them both with. 

The body that Tenebroum wore today was an entirely different story. For months, it had been transported from battlefield to battlefield, but it had not actually been used since it had slayed Siddrim the year before. 

It had been repaired and upgraded in the interim, of course, but the Lich had felt no need to join the battle directly, especially not since the Moon Goddess’s ambush. That changed now. In fact, the Lich hoped that she would try to intervene, for it had brought several sorceress servants to the battlefield for just such an eventuality. Tonight, it would happily act as bait to win a battle like this that would all but bring about the end of its war. 

Though the Lich much preferred to let its spirit drift among the ravens or haunt the battlefield as a dark mist, it would face the Templar directly this time. It had even brought a few trinkets to try to capture the divine spark that the man wielded so effectively. If the darkness could not capture one more piece of the Lord of Light, snuffing it out would be almost as important a victory, though. 

When the darkness moved into its construct, it felt its world diminish and shrink as it began to flex and test each joint and limb. Remembering what it was like to be a singular thing rather than a divine entity of awesome power took longer than it had before. It was more stifling, too, but Tenebroum ignored it as it nestled deeper among the hollow bones of the holy men that had made up his combat form. 

Over the last few months Tenebroum had designed many specialized forms, including one body was nothing more than a tarnished silver skeleton covered in a skin made up of the mouths and faces of the dead. That body was almost solely occupied with a large series of multichambered lungs that could constantly inhale even as it channeled the air to the vocal cords of almost twenty different mouths. 

There were still some bugs to be worked out, but when it was complete, it would allow it to cast impossibly complex spells that even a full choir of decapitated mage heads could not do presently. Such things were not required of mortal enemies, of course, but the Gods it was pitted against would need more power, and given enough time, Tenebroum was more than capable of making a weapon appropriate to any foe or battle. 

The Templar was not a God, though. He was a pretender, and even though he’d defeated a number of Tenebroum’s lesser constructs, he could not hope to stand against the full force of a divine being or the deadly body that it wielded. After all, what could a spark do to it after it had already withstood the bonfire? 

The Lich listened to its Paragon drone on a little longer while it manifested its four shadowy blades and then, without a word it began to stride toward the front lines. All around it, troops stirred to life as they realized its intent, and they began to stir. Blocks of war zombies began to march, cavalry charged forward, and other stranger things moved according to their general’s plan. 

Tenebroum reserved one of the war zombie bands for itself, pulling the formation to it and using them both as shield and disguise as they marched toward the rubble that had been the shattered gatehouse. This part, at least, the Lich enjoyed. There was a different flavor to the screams and the swirling violence when one was a part of the churning maelstrom of war as opposed to soaring far above it. 

To the enemy, it was just another wave of undead warriors. Their archers and mages never once noticed that every bolt and blast seemed to miss Tenebroum. Instead, its minions were stuck, one at a time, removing almost half of them from the field before the formation reached its goal. 

It didn’t even have to get close to the shattered gate to know that he was waiting for them. The Lich had known that he would be. It had seen him as a beacon across the battlefield, and given the shadows that billowed around it, even in the heavy armor of this body, it was sure that the man with blazing eyes could see it just as easily.

There were no words exchanged when the Lich trudged up the slope with its remaining vanguard. Normally, it would have used the bloodthirsty mob that was Krulm’venor to clear the path, but given talismans that the mages had, it was inadvisable. Instead, its war zombies charged into the grinder and were cut down, one after the other, buying time and distance with their heavily reinforced bodies as they endured blow after terrible blow. 

The Lich’s army was everywhere, and its numbers seemed limitless. Despite that, they were spread across the entire length of the wall. So, at this spot, there were enough warriors to outnumber it. At least, that was true at first. There were perhaps fifty ragtag humans left standing by the time it was reduced to only a bare handful of leathery, riveted war zombies that had not been beheaded or crushed yet. 

It became a tangled storm of swords as the scrum was reduced to a chaotic melee. There, the Lich had an advantage that no one could match: with so few minions in such close proximity, it could control each of them very specifically. So, despite the chaos, its final few minions became extensions of its limited body, acting as one and taking out many times their own number. The living lasted no longer than its zombies did, though, because each time the Templar flared to life with holy fire in an attempt to smite it, the Lich used those dark shadows to lash out far beyond its normal reach. 

Its blades that were exposed to that light directly dimmed and shortened for a moment with each blast as they were reduced to nothing but their rusting cores. Their shadows sprang to life for that instant, becoming more like whips than blades as they sought out the closest living thing and murdered it. 

After all, there were shadows in every suit or armor and unwatched vulnerabilities under the enemy’s guard. So, every time the Templar flashed to life to heal himself or to attempt to strike down the Lich, two or three of the men closest to it died painful deaths as their shadows became infested by its own for an instant before they were ripped to pieces and diced like soft cheese. 

When the battle had begun there were nearly a hundred warriors, both living and dead, but after twenty minutes of fighting only two remained. Horns were blowing in the distance, calling for more reinforcements, but they would never arrive in time.  

Instead, this was a battle that would be decided only by two warriors, and one of them was already bleeding. The Lich didn’t think much of this pretender, even up close. It had already studied him through the unguarded eyes of the man’s squire, but it saw nothing that the man had admired so much. 

He was a brute and nothing more. Every attack was an exercise in power, but compared to a dark god, power was the one thing he didn’t have. The Templar bore a heavy glowing blade and hammered it home over and over, but the feeble light he used was nothing compared to what Siddrim had burned it with or even what he’d used on the warf the day before. 

“Whats the matter,” the Lich rasped in a voice that was rusty and discordant. “Why won’t you show me how brightly you can burn.”

“You’d be ready for something so straightforward, wouldn’t you?” the Templar growled through gritted teeth. 

His light burned bright enough to keep the darkness circling him like a hungry swarm at bay, but only just. The Lich proceeded to batter the man with a swarm of attacks. It even taunted him with the knowledge that it had killed his god and his squire, but still, the man did not react. 

“I know what you’ve done!” the Templar spat, offering no further insight into what he was thinking. 

“Then you should know that you’re next!” The Lich shrieked, redoubling its efforts, becoming a storm of blades. 

It delivered a dozen minor wounds before it succeeded in knocking the Templar from the place they fought atop the rubble and sending him tumbling down the slope to the ground below. Despite that, the shadows found no purchase on the man’s soul. There were no stains to infect or guilt to blossom.  

“What do you think you can do with your tricks that your god could not do with your healing and your light?” The Lich gloated, pointing all four of its blades down at the fallen warrior. “You have fallen, and soon your city will too!”

“I guess I’ll need a new trick then,” The Templar said with an inscrutable smile as he dropped his weapons and pulled something from behind his breastplate. 

The Lich had a moment to study the swirling prismatic shard that the man was holding. That’s how long it took it to realize that was the same shard the rat had told him the man had refused last night. He’d expected the mages to lay their trap, but now, suddenly, it was in the hands of this brute. 

It surged forward, twining its four shadowy weapons together and launching them at the strange object like a pike of pure darkness. They never reached him. 

“Burn!” The Templar yelled. After that, everything was erased in a curtain of fire.

Ch. 141 - Burned in Effigy

Some distant part of Tenebroum’s mind recalled what it was the infernal rats had told it when they had whispered about this encounter. Crystallized dragon fire, they had called it. The breath of a wyrm frozen in time. The mages claimed that they lacked the power to release it with their weakened numbers and that only the Templar’s light might succeed where they had failed. 

The Rat’s smelled subterfuge in that statement. They’d even thought to mention that to the Lich, but at no time had they mentioned that the Templar might have had the scent of deceit about his as well. That no longer mattered, though. 

Now, everything was burning. The fire had shattered its prison, and launched toward it like a Tsunami with ferocity that might have melted even Krulm’venor’s specialized form. The wall of fire burned in yellow and white, blasting back the rubble that was the remains of the gatehouse from the force of the shockwave, and bathing world in incandescent flames for twenty yards on either side of the breach in the walls, and extending backward a hundred yards behind Tenebroum. 

There was nowhere for it to run now, not even if it wanted to. All it could do was trust in the skill of its unwilling dwarven artificers as it moved one step at a time toward the man that was holding the torrent of fire in his bare hands. The Lich was a creature that was made up of pure will, but that didn’t make enduring what it was experiencing any less agonizing. 

The shadows on its blades had winked out immediately, but it only dropped their rusted cores as the phalangies of its hands began to reduce to slag and ash. In those first few terrible seconds it losts two hands and an arm. Finally, the head of this construct itself was blasted to ash in the high pressure torrent of inhuman flame. 

Tenebroum had not designed this body to endure fire like this. Nothing was. Its mind raced as it tried to imagine what it would need to do that, but even if it could craft the brittle ceramic bones, the dragon scales were something it simply didn't have

This form had been created to fight the light, which wasn’t quite the same as what it was facing now. Light it could have handled for hours. Wearing this form, the Lich could have walked for several minutes under the noon day suns if it had been required. But against the heat of a dragon’s breath? The gilded coating of the Lich’s bones very nearly evaporated under that terrible assault. 

Bronze and brass didn’t last much longer, and after a few seconds, even the Lich’s steel bones began to redden and soften. In the end, it was only its mithril armor that saved it. 

As its arms fell and its legs gave way only a few steps away from its goal, the darkness was forced to hide in an ever smaller portion of its carefully crafted vessel. Even among the grave goods the Lich had looted, mithril was a rare substance, and this was the only construct it had built with half so much of the stuff. Fire, as it turned out, could not penetrate the silvery metal, and even as the flames began to subside and it was forced to cower there like some sort of metallic beached tortoise, it endured. 

Less than half a minute after the torrent of fire started, it was over. The nearby stone walls had been melted by the flames, and anything not made of stone or metal had been erased from existence. 

For a moment, the Lich stood ready to flee and lick its wounds, but then it saw the mangled corpse of its opponent and changed its mind. The front of the Templar had been burned away down to the bones. Even as it watched, it could see the man trying to heal himself from the impossible damage, but the Lich didn’t see how that would be possible. It could see the man’s tortured lungs rising and falling in his charred rib cage, and though he still had his arms and hands, they were practically skeletonized from the elbow down. 

The Lich rose up from its own charred corpse as a vaporous mist and moved with haste to the closest war zombie it could find. It felt terribly vulnerable in this form but not so vulnerable that it would not see this man dead. Just because it should have been impossible to recover from such a grievous injury did not mean it would not happen. 

So, with the uneven gate that came from no longer being used to walking with only two legs, the Lich trudged back over to the man, raised the rusting great sword clutched in its skeletal hands, and then brought the weapon down hard, shoving a foot and a half of steel through his heart and into the scorched earth beyond. Pinning the Templar to the ground and finally forcing his cursed heart to stop its endless beating. 

The light left his body then and drifted toward the night sky. The Lich wanted to stop it. It had meant to capture and study it, but all the devices and spirits that it thought might have accomplished that had been annihilated. Instead, it let the thing go. It was too depleted to do more than that. 

It could still claim the second most important soul present on the battlefield, though. The darkness poured out of the construct. It was animating like smoke and traveled down the blade into the still-warm body of its foe. 

This was one soul it would treasure. Tenebroum wasn’t yet sure what it would do with it, but these bones would be taken back to it lair for something truly diabolical. It found the soul just where it expected, and swarmed it, encompassing it completely, so escape would be impossible. 

To its surprise, the man didn’t even struggle when it forced its way inside every last pore, seeking to suffuse him completely. He just said, “So you survived that, did you monster? The mages told me there was no way anything could stand up to the dragon’s fury. Not even me. I suppose they were right about the last part at least.”

“Silence!” Tenebroum countered. “You will have all the time in the world to apologize to me and beg forgiveness, but now—”

“Apologize?” the Templar Laughed. “I’m just sorry that I didn’t eradicate you with the same weapon that killed me. I knew I couldn’t trust those damn mages. Jordan was an okay sort, but the rest of them? Liars and thieves, the lot of them.”

Tenebroum was so apoplectic as it tried to understand what was going on that it merely floated there as a slowly solidifying haze while the annoying warrior spoke. Even now, without the light, he still had a small aura about him. The darkness reached forward to try to grip him and force him to comply, but its dark tendrils slid right off the ghost. 

“All of this, and you still think you have a hold over me?” the Templar asked, looking at him in amusement. 

“I control the forces of death itself! All spirits are within my power!” Tenebroum roared, but that only made the frustrating warrior’s smile broader. 

“You don’t get it, do you?” he asked with a shake of his head, 

You only snared Siddrim with Todd’s stained soul, you—”

“Of course I know that!” Tenebroum hissed, swirling around the man like a storm as he looked for an opening. 

It couldn’t find one, though, and more frustratingly, even as it watched, the spirit was already fading away. That was intolerable. There should be nowhere for it to flee to, and yet it was happening!

“Then you already know that you have no hold on a soul without any darkness in it,” The Templar said with a shrug. “You cannot stop me from going to the Elysian Fields that were promised to me and my brothers and sisters.” He looked like he was going to sleep now. 

“No soul is clean!” Tenebroum raged. “No life is without taint!”

“True, mostly,” the Templar agreed. “There was a little darkness in even my soul once upon a time. I used to hate myself for all the mistakes I’d made, but a few years with the light burning away inside you is enough to bleach even those transgressions to nothing. I die with only a single regret, but will accept that I maimed you at the very least…”

Tenebroum’s scream of incoherent rage as the mans spirit slowly faded to view and crumbled to nothingness was enough to stop its constructs in mid stride for a hundred yards in any direction. A dozen of its blackbirds fell from the sky. 

It had experience anger and frustration before, but it had never felt the strains of volcanic rage like this, and for a while, its ghostly form flickered and jittered like an agitated swarm of wasps. It had achieved its goal, and yet somehow it had gotten nothing it wanted from the event. 

It had faced down terrible magics, beaten what might have been its only real adversary left on the continent besides the mages, and the gods themselves, and somehow it had walked away with nothing. Not the divine spark, nor even the soul of its enemy to torture for the rest of eternity.

Despite that, much of its power had been bled away in the assault. I maimed you, at the very least. Those words echoed in its mind even as it took in its ragged form that was closer to a shredded burial shroud than a cloak of pure midnight. 

The fool did nothing that cannot be repaired with a day or two of rest! Tenebroum griped, but the words were cold comfort. 

Finally, when it was so angry that it would have gnashed its teeth with rage if it still had a body, the Lich retreated, floating above and away from the burning city. The defenses were failing on several fronts now, and it no longer saw mages casting their bolts from the walls. 

“Crush the defenders and sink the ships, but leave the rest to cower in their homes,” Tenebroum commanded as it drifted higher and further to take in all the violence. 

It was wounded, frustrated, and in absolutely no mood to enjoy the mindless slaughter that would unfold next. So, that would wait for tomorrow. There was no hurry any longer. The shepherd was dead, and the sheep would mill around, panicky and bleating, until they were ready for the slaughter.

The Lich was determined to enjoy that moment, and if it could not do so tonight, then they would just be allowed to keep breathing for another day or two until it had collected itself.

Yes, it thought as it drifted up into the night to look for the nearest dungeon that would be dark enough to allow it to rest. Rahkin’s defenders are no more. The table is set now, and the feast can begin at my leisure.

There were still thousands of living souls in those broken city walls, and soon, every last one of them would die screaming for its pleasure.