Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 162-163 (Patreon)

Ch. 162 - Awakening the Wolf

The battle lasted all day, and it wasn’t even clear until almost evening that Tenebroum’s forces would win. At this point, the outcome of the war was not in doubt, even if this desperate battle still hung in the balance. In the broadest sense, it wouldn’t matter if it took one battle or five of them to secure their doom. However, if it gave the mages breathing room, it would almost certainly affect the quality of knowledge that it would be able to pillage from the place. 

That was what drove the Lich on more than anything at this point. A victory for the mages, while meaningless in itself, would give them hours or days to address the corpses that littered the interior of the Magica Collegium. Every head they managed to burn on a funeral pyre would be one less mage that it could add to its library. While both men and undead abominations were replaceable, the arcane knowledge contained in the minds of some of these men was not. 

That was what drove it to scrape together whatever reinforcements it could, including drudges fit only for digging tunnels. It would send another wave the following evening, even if only to keep the mages pinned. Fortunately, that proved unnecessary. A few minutes before the blood-red sunset, the final mage was torn to pieces where he was hiding in an alcove on the third basement floor. Out of the hundreds of deathless warriors the Lich had sent to launch this surprise attack, only seventeen of them still moved, and none of them were whole, but it was enough. 

Thanks to what it had done to the flows of magic, it had been able to accomplish with a small force what it probably wouldn’t have been able to do with the entirety of its army if magic had worked properly. It had even wounded the Goddess Lunaris herself, which was, in its mind, worth nearly as much as the sacking of Abenend. Both were victories worth celebrating, and it immediately ordered Verdenin to have his acolytes and sightless monks do just that. What was the point of having a congregation or worshipers if not for moments like this? 

Sadly, the Lich could not begin to investigate its spoils immediately. Instead, its minions had to disable all of the dark obelisks and dread monoliths that it had spent so long installing. Then, once that was done, it had to wait weeks for several storm systems to dilute and dissipate the poison that had taken so long to build. 

Tenebroum spent that time listening to the songs and the chants of its growing priesthood as it lurked among the undertemple. Most of these rites involved human sacrifice, at the moment of crescendo, but these were largely war captives taken from isolated villages, or tribute that had come to it from the Voice of Reason by way of Tanda. None of those lives mattered, of course, at the best use of them was for moments like this. 

Tenebroum acknowledged that such moments were indulgent, but they passed the time, and it had no other pressing tasks to accomplish. Most of its ever enlarging empire proceeded on autopilot at this point, leaving it free for new experiments. The Lich did not have to travel east to Constantinal to ensure that the production of its armies were proceeding on schedule, any more than it had to travel north to where its armies were marching across the desert, one night at a time.

Indeed, the only thing it paused to do besides bask in the adoration and the fear of its worshipers was to study the stain on the face of the moon. Because of the way her phases changed, and she moved to hide the darkness, it was hard to see, but even so, Tenebroum could very clearly see the shadow's long tendrils crawling across her surface. Its weapon had found its mark, and though it spread slowly, it was still spreading, which meant that the Lunar Goddess of magic and protection still hadn’t found a way to fully combat his vile sorcery.

That was welcome news, highlighting that she was every bit as unprepared for him as Siddrim had been. So, while the Lich listened to dirges that celebrated his final victory over the last holdout of the area, it mused and deliberated over various plans that might be used to end her once and for all before passing them off to its library so they could be refined and implemented. 

It was only three weeks later when the taint in Abened had fallen by more than ninety percent, that the Lich approached the school in a body that had been prepared for this environment. Though not exactly built for combat, the abomination it walked the world once more with had been fortified and reinforced with a leaden skin that had been embedded with hundreds of cast iron runes that were meant to warn and protect against the worst of the miasma’s effects. 

This form carried no weapons with it beyond its metal fists and its powerful runes of protection. Indeed, it was armed only with a golden collar that it had made for its quarry, should it really be here. 

Tenebroum wished to see the lair of its enemy with its own eyes, but it would not do so in a foolhardy way that would see it crippled for weeks or worse. Its encounter with the Templar and his dragon fire had left an indelible lesson in that regard. 

Still, if those mages had so many powerful weapons that they could use them so casually, then it was that much more important that it carefully dissected their holdings itself. That was why it did not delegate this task to a lesser mind and journeyed from the cavernous beachhead its minions had dug several miles from the school to the charred gates themselves. 

The way was not far and led through the partially rebuilt ruins of Abenend, but the faint glows that spread across the Lich’s leaden skin revealed nothing it needed to be concerned about. The school itself, though, was another matter. There, in certain hallways and in places where the fighting had been thickest, the miasma still clung to the corpses of the fallen, and it was forced to backtrack and take new paths to its goals. 

In its wake, it left drudges with any number of orders: clean this up, gather those books, harvest and preserve these heads. There was always a flurry of activity in the Lich’s wake, but whenever it was examining something important, it was always alone so that it might deliberate in stillness. 

The Collegium was a mess but an impressive one. From the outside, the Lich had viewed it as a castle and a bastion of war for so long that it was easy to forget that it was a school with lodging for hundreds of students and dozens of teachers. It took quite a lot of space to support all of those people, as well as the servants who cooked and cleaned for them. On top of all that facilities to support that mass of humanity, there were also innumerable warehouses, store rooms, study halls, libraries, workshops, and classrooms. 

After almost a day of wandering the premises, the Lich was fairly sure that the place was larger on the inside than it was on the outside. That realization was enough to make it recall the uncomfortable battle that occurred with the city god of Constantinal so long ago. For a brief moment, fear of that inexplicable infinity shot through it. If the space inside the Magica Collegium was distorted in similar ways, might there be similarly inescapable traps?

The thought put the Lich on guard for the next several days, but it was not afraid. The mere idea that something might exist was not enough to merit retreat. After all, despite all the battles that had taken place here, it had never seen evidence of a small god associated with the Collegium. It was certainly old enough to have one, of course, but it was also entirely possible that the mages had done something to prevent one from taking root. 

Tenebroum might find the answer to those questions when it began to ransack the memories of the mages that lived here, but for now it put it out of its mind and focused on the present as it descended ever deeper into the dead hallways of the school. 

Along the way, the Lich found dozens of objects of interest, from magical relics that it did not fully understand to books that had been bound shut for unknown purposes. Every one of these was collected, but it was only on the bottom floor of the deepest basement that the Lich finally found what it was looking for. 

There, past remains that had been interred in Sepelchurs that displayed the honor or dishonor that led the mortal remains of some ancient sorcerer to be interred in such a spot; the Lich finally saw the stone sarcophagus it had been searching for, sealed in lead and lying undisturbed for who knew how long. 

The runes of its magic-resistant body glowed a dull, angry red down here. That wasn’t because the whole floor was guarded against evil with layered enchantments. They might be enough to make a lesser drudge cease to function or crumble to dust, but against the Lich, all they could do was express their displeasure as it moved past them. 

When the Lich reached the Sarcophegus, it ripped the stone lid off without much effort at all. For a moment, the enchantments that warded the lid screamed against its touch, but even as its current body’s fingertips began to melt, it hurled the thing aside, letting it shatter against the far wall. 

There, in the container, was a large, desiccated hound that might have been nearly the size of a pony bound by rusted chains. The Lich had half expected it to come to life on the spot, but when it sat there like little more than the mummified pet of a long-dead king, it placed the collar around the neck of the ancient hound’s corpse, then picked up the animal and began to carry it toward the exit. Obviously, the magics and wards were still too stone down here, and it would need to be revived elsewhere. 

The wards that Tenebroum had bypassed easily enough did not like this turn of events and glowed all the fiercer as it tried to leave, forcing the Lich to deface several on his way out the door. The mages here had truly planned for everything; well, everything except for it, Tenebroum thought darkly. 

The Lich brought its burden to a dining hall on the first floor. It was empty and save for a single feature, utterly unimportant. It just happened to be just below the room on the second floor where Tenebroum had ordered its drudges to gather all the unimportant bodies. 

So, it set the hound down in the center of the floor, and then, with a thought, the Lich ordered one of the reavers in the room above to punch a hole in the floor above, allowing all the blood that had started to pool up there to rain down on the ancient creature. 

At first, nothing happened. It was only after almost a minute that Tenebroum noticed that the desiccated corpse was drinking in that awful vitality and slowly returning to life. Moment by moment, its muscles bulged, and its tissues became more supple until it was finally strong enough to shatter the chains that bound it. 

Slowly, like a newborn fawn it found the strength to stand, and stood there on shivering legs. Then, when it turned and saw the Lich standing there, it growled a deep, bone chilling growl that resonated throughout the room. It took a moment, and then it slowly advanced on the leaden construct with its teeth bared. 

Before it got halfway to Tenebroum, though, the Lich spat a command. “Sit!” The word echoed through the room briefly, and then a moment later, though the giant hound clearly didn’t want to, it did exactly that.

Ch. 163 - Digging for Answers

Tenebroum had hoped that the hound would have been able to provide it the answers it craved, unlike the incoherent swarm of rats, Ghrosian. In that way, at least, it was disappointed. The thing had a powerful soul, even in its weakened state, but there was no intelligence there. Instead, there was only an overflowing font of rage that swirled in its core. 

That wasn’t completely different from the rats, of course, save that they swirled in fear. It could see how the two of them were compatible in that sense and that they might fit together. Not that it would ever bring them together, of course. The Lich had the nameless hound tied to a stake in a cave and allowed to continue to decontaminate for a month before it was brought back to Tenebroum’s lair for further experiments. 

The hound spent most of its time sealed in a room on the third level, far from the caged rats that the Lich had brought here for study previously. The two might have very compatible souls that could fit together, but that did not mean that the Lich had any desire to bring them together. That was one experiment that was simply too dangerous until it knew more.

At first, those were a matter of simple bloodsport. It would pit the thing against various beasts before having it fight men and even undead abominations. Though the hound was huge, it was also barely skin and bones when these matches started. Yet despite that, it never lost. There was a terrible ferocity in it that the Lich could not fully understand but was eager to see in action. In its first match against a grizzly bear, the hound tore it to shreds despite being entirely outclassed in both size and weight. It was a bloody spectacle that simply had to be seen to be believed.  

It scarcely killed any quicker when it faced off against a man in full plate mail. Somehow, despite any specific magics that Tenebroum could identify, the thing simply shredded its opponents, always becoming stronger than them, and after each bloody bout, it grew visibly. At first, it had been the size of a large hunting dog, but now it was something closer to a small horse, and even with its collar on, it paced back and forth pensively whenever the Lich locked it away.

Sometimes, when Tenebroum brought its latest pet out of its cage, it would not be for its own private bloodsport. Instead, it would experiment on the thing while it bayed and howled. Sometimes, these experiments would be simple dissection and vivisection, as it wondered what made this thing tick and accounted for its strange immortality. Other times, it would be bound within one or more magic circles of the Lich’s devising while it sought to study the thing with divination magics. It found nothing useful, which was as rare as it was frustrating.

How could such a simple creature evade my understanding of it! Tenebroum thought in annoyance. It is more animal than spirit!

Eventually, for lack of anything better to do, it released it into the Red Hills just to see what it would do to the poor, woefully unprepared goblin tribes that still existed there. The Lich still kept an outpost of undead at the gold mine where drudges slaved away endlessly, and it occasionally sought out unwilling goblins for experiments, but by and large, that place had lost most of its importance to the Lich, who was now focused on other fronts. 

The hound tore through the place like a force of nature, devouring a new lair nearly every night. It didn’t matter if they used poison or magic, and if they fought with weapons or claws, nothing could stand against the monster. 

In fact, its performance was so frightening that Lich immediately began to work both on a better binding collar and a method of eliminating the wolf, should it ever find a way to turn on its owner. It clearly did not like being forced to obey, and the Lich had little doubt that if it ever broke free in the same way that the troublesome river spirit had, it would not end well. 

So, it set to work on several ooze-based solutions that would be entirely immune to the teeth and claws of the hound so that it would have options should the need arise. One of its fleshcrafters suggested that the Lich could install a failsafe alchemical charge in the thing, but given how poorly the Lich’s attempts to graft better weapons to its claws had gone, such an experiment seemed unlikely to end well. 

It is not a creature, dead or alive, the Tenebroum reminded itself. It is a godling, the same as my twisted dryads or that cursed moon. 

It was easy to forget that, given that all it did was fight and kill and devour. The hound had a certain predatory intelligence, but nothing more than that. Were it not for the golden collar that it wore around its neck, it would be nothing but a berserk, slavering beast. 

After months of study, the Lich eventually lost interest in its newest pet and left it to rampage in the Red Hills while it turned its attention to older projects; in time, when Tenebroum was sure the thing had stopped growing, it would send it to the front to fight with the rest of its minions, but it wanted no surprises. 

As it searched through its catalog of unfinished abominations, it found none, either. Its carefully pruned nature goddess no longer spent all of her time screaming and begging to die. Instead, she’d decorated the small garden it had allowed her in that barren Constantenal courtyard with deadly nightshade and any number of other toxic herbs and flowers, humming away while the thorns that pierced her skin bled as they always did.

She still cowered in its presence, but the Lich was certain that when she was set free, she’d be happy to do as bidden and hunt down her former peers. However, for now, the Lich was content to watch her grow and change, studying her as the scars continued to fade, looking for any clues as to what she might become when she was complete and finally blossomed.

It spent some time examining the new juggernauts that were being created in Constantinal and some of the new vessels that incorporated parts whales and sharks in lieu of wood in Rahkin, but eventually, the Lich found itself once again focused on its plot to undermine the All-Father again. 

Its poison was still spreading through the moon, and she was rarely seen in the sky as anything but a waxing or a waning crescent anymore. There had been some signs lately that she might manage to fight off the cancerous soul that had been injected into her, but each time she made progress and seemed to get brighter, a few weeks later, there would be a relapse, and she would lose all the progress she’d made. 

The Lich didn’t understand exactly what was happening, but it didn’t care either. As long as she was weak and suffering, it could focus on trying to hunt down and break other gods, and for some time now, it had chosen the dwarf to deal with next. 

This wasn’t because the All-Father was the most powerful or the most dangerous. It wasn’t even because it had dared to lay a finger on the Lich in their single real encounter. It was simply because he was accessible. 

Once Tenebroum had decided that Krulm’venor would not be useful in the war against the mages now that they’d developed some way of nullifying the magics that animated the godling, Tenebroum had sent him into the depths to purge other dwarven cities with fire. This was for the death and the pain it provided Tenebroum as much as anything, but each conquest allowed it to steal away a few more dwarven relics, and that, it had decided, was the key to breaking the All-Father’s soul. 

As a god, it was better known to the Lich thanks to the wealth of stolen source materials it had taken from the charred cities and tombs it had ransacked over the last several years. It was also simpler than the others it had tried to learn about. The secret that Krulm’venor had tried to hide for so long when it had been in every book and mural: the All-Father was literally an amalgam of all the honored dwarven dead that had gone before. 

Though it did not yet fully understand why dwarves ossified as they aged, it was now very clear that when a dwarf finally could live no longer, its flesh would turn gray and shrivel into something like soft sandstone before falling to dust, leaving only the partially crystallized skeleton behind. It was the skulls that the dwarves were interested in when they buried the body, which meant that it was the skulls the Lich was interested in as well.

It had constructed many abominations from the bones of dwarves at this point, which meant that its flesh crafters had dissected thousands of corpses, and these changes only seemed to start sometime around three hundred years old. The very oldest dwarves might reach three hundred and fifty years of age, but the exact age didn’t seem to matter, only that they lived a life of honor and lasted until it was their time.

For a while, the Lich had merely crushed the skulls to extract a lifetime’s worth of essence, but recently, it had become more interested in a simple question: if the All-Father was a giant structure built brick by brick from the souls of the honored dead, then how many of those souls would the Lich have to corrupt or drive insane before the whole thing collapsed. 

On the face of things, the All-Father was an indomitable warrior who spent almost all of his time deep in his earthen fortress where no one could touch him. That wasn’t true, though. The God’s seat of power might be there, but in reality, he was spread across a hundred cities, and a thousand graveyards, and the Lich was determined to destroy as many of them as it had to before the God finally came apart at the seams. 

Of course, it was much too busy to do such things itself, but with a little effort, it had driven a handful of dwarven priests insane, and now they labored day and night in the Lich’s warehouse of crystal skulls with forbidden runes that conflicted and warred with each other, carving them into the crystalline skulls one at a time. This was not an effort that would pay dividends tomorrow. It was like the erosion of water on stone. Each drip was imperceptible, but taken together, they could wear away a whole mountain range. 

When used to attack a god that had been around as long as the All-Father, that was certainly an apt metaphor. Tenebroum’s slow but insidious efforts would break him, and then it would devour whatever pieces were left.