Tenebroum 19-20 (Patreon)

Ch. 19 - Dying Embers

Kruln’venor was disgusted by its circumstances, but that was nothing new. That was the first emotion it felt each evening, as it flared to life when the Burning Skulls added fuel to their cookfires and lit the bonfires at their shrines. During the day, when it was slowly reduced to embers, it lacked the awareness to contemplate such things, but each evening it was born again, and that meant that each evening it had to remember how far it had fallen.

Kruln’venor, once the scourge of the underrealm. Stone burner. Sacker of of Ghen’tal and Mournden. Once dozens were fed to the fire each day so it could feast on their flesh and their mana, but now it lorded over a handful of goblins. That there were less than two hundred of the buggers, only added salt to the wound. How a dwarven demigod had fallen so far that instead of inhabiting the forge fires of a dozen cities it dwelled only in the campfires of a single tribe of greenskins it couldn’t quite recall. The further back that the flickering fire spirit tried to think, the hazier things got until there was nothing but dark smoke bitter disappointment.

The goblins wouldn’t have been enough to support it now if they weren’t so blood thirsty and didn’t dwell in the shadow of a dead volcano. Krulm’venor seemed to recall that it had been forced to flee something in the dark when its last fortress monastery had fallen, and that it had chosen the volcano as a place to be reborn, like a phoenix from the ashes it had planned to detonate it and use the eruption to ignite the nearby forest on fire in a conflagration that was truly worthy of its majesty. It had lacked the strength though, and over time it had withered away until its pride had atrophied so much that the idea of being a war god to a vicious army of goblins hadn’t seemed like a terrible idea.

It surveyed its shrinking kingdom though, and it knew that it had erred mightily though. Perhaps if it had been an orc warband full of rage, or even hobgoblins with their crude sense of discipline, it might have been different, but goblins simply weren’t cut out for greater things. As it was recently, the Burning Skulls had stopped expanding. No matter how much power he poured into their shaman they could barely hold back the resurgent Black Teeth to the west. Its tribe suddenly seemed to lack the strength to match another small tribe to the west and was nowhere near strong enough to brave the plains to the east and the humans they would almost certainly find there. It was maddening.

The spirit would have withdrawn its power from the incompetent bastards entirely if that wouldn’t have spelled its certain doom. Without blood and fire, it was doomed to fade into the background until even it forgot that it had ever existed. Even if it was a fruitless struggle the fallen god would cling to life in the same tenacious way that the goblins did when they ripped each other to pieces for scraps of territory.

It tore its gaze away from the goblin’s filthy warren and took to the sky to survey its kingdom. Today not even the beauty of its gold could mollify it. Once that had been its focus: to conquer enough land to bring slaves back to mine it, but it had never materialized, and now it served as an unwelcome reminder of better days.

The nighttime hillside wasn’t much better though. Only a year or two ago it had two dozen fires burning for it. Now the spirit had to settle for less than half a dozen cookfires and a few torches. It was pathetic. How could the shaman that claimed to worship it even expect to have enough mana to sling their bolts and blasts around if they would not pay homage to the fearsome Krulm’venor and his terrible hunger.

When they went to bed at dawn, but before the fires had guttered entirely it would chastise them in their dreams and make its displeasure known. The spirit trembled with desire at the prospect. Its prophetic dreams hadn’t seemed to be having much of an effect on its worshipers lately but enjoyed tormenting them just the same. Other than the taste of meat it was the one joy left in its life.

Had its territory always been so cramped, it wondered as it floated from hill to hill surveying its tiny kingdom. It used to be that its world stretched far enough that it reached most of the way to the horizon, but now it seemed like it was almost half of that was in a shadow that its flame wouldn’t penetrate, and instead of the ash covered skulls of its enemies dotting totems along the old boundary, there were only the new yellow skulls there to replace them. It didn’t even understand why either tribe would use a yellow skull. What was that supposed to signify.

Krulm’venor should have been martialing patrol to go and strike down the strange totems, but it couldn’t be bothered. Unless it concerned a fight or trips to one of the stands of trees that still stood in its territory to gather firewood. Nothing else mattered.

Eventually that’s what the spirit decided it needed and stoked the emotions in the warband leaders. Tonight, it wanted a fight. It wanted blood and flesh, and after a little coxing, they did too. They seemed strangely reluctant to deal with the Black Teeth to the east, but the broken remnants of the Stone Fists too far to the north to deal with without more planning and vanishing into smoke each morning after the fires died made it somewhat difficult for the spirit to plan anything anymore.

So, they set out. A warband of thirty that would be more than a match for any scouting or scavenging party they found. Krulm’venor let the group drift further away from the main strongholds of the black teeth and hunt for one or two that it could get alone near the watering hole just outside of its domain. There amongst the reeds and the weeds it was easy enough to pick off a straggler and take it back to the caves to feed.

It had been a favorite strategy of the Burning Skulls for a long time, and it had been working to excellent effect lately. It had first against the Dog Eaters, and later against the Black Teeth after they’d usurped that boundary. Once the spirit had tried to instill some dwarvish martial discipline into its ragged tribe of greenskins, but it had never taken. Now it settled for some hit and run sneak attacks, and the sheer ferocity that goblins naturally excelled at.

Further thoughts about tactics and planning drifted away like smoke as the ragged cry went up. Someone from another tribe had been spotted. Instantly the vast majority of the warband surged forward. They’d been goaded into such a frenzy that each one of them wanted to be the one to rip out the throat of the enemy. Only the two shamans and their flunkies stayed behind at the edge of the tall grass. They weren’t wary exactly. They just saw no reason to get involved chasing down a single warrior. The only fire that would be needed for such a small meal was already burning back in the lowest level of their warren.

Outside its territory it could only see through the eyes of its goblins, but that was enough to enjoy the spectacle. Through half a dozen different pairs of eyes it saw flashes of a single goblin fleeing through its life as it ran at the water's edge. Its lead was shrinking though. Ten feet… Five feet… Any minute now the Burning Skull warrior would catch it and disembowel it.

Except that’s not what happened at all.

Suddenly there was a wall of Black Teeth standing in front of the fleeing goblin and he seamlessly slipped through a hole in the lines before it closed behind them. There were at least two dozen of them, and the worst part wasn’t even that they seemed to have appeared from nowhere, it was that the ones at the center of the ambush were the bigger, crazed looking goblins that had been responsible for their recent gains. It had to have been some side effect from the poison toads that tribe ate in tough times, because the berserkers that charged heedlessly into battle had dark veins throbbing underneath their skin which was crisscrossed with dark black scars.

In a battle of savages, they were monsters. The Burning Skulls tried to fight at first, but what was supposed to have been a simple ambush had reversed now, and instead of being a quick bit of sport followed by a snack, it was a bloodbath that was quickly becoming a rout. The claustrophobic battlefield dominated by shadows and dense foliage that was much too wet to burn played to all of the Black Teeth’s strengths, and all of the Burning Skulls’ weaknesses. It was almost like they’d planned it that way.

That was impossible of course. None of the other goblin tribes in the area had a patron spirit, or magic for that matter, which only made the moment that much more humiliating for Krulm’venor. Its strongest warband was getting their faces bashed in, and it was all due to dumb luck.

The Burning Skulls broke before the fourth body fell bleeding into the muck. Even though they outnumbered their enemy they could feel the danger radiating off the warband leader and the core of his warriors. The only thing that they had which could stand up to that sort of violence was the fire, and so they broke and ran back towards their shaman. It was a desperate flight, both because of the fear that the enemy that they ran from as well as the fact that some of the Burning Skulls closest to them would inevitably be burned alive in the crossfire.

That was fine with Krulm’venor. Either way it got the taste of flesh and the screams of agony that it craved. It was practically drooling for the climactic conclusion when those black toothed bastards burst out of the tall grass only to face a wall of fire. They might have bloodied its nose, but they would pay a heavy price for the privilege.

At least that’s what it thought, but when the first of the Burning skulls burst out of the wall of cattails and could finally see its own shaman again, that view changed everything. Krulm’venor warned the shaman enough for them to turn and see what was bearing down on them, but by then it was too late to summon fire or to run in fear. No matter how fast they ran they would never outrun the dog riders that were bearing down on them.

Dog Eater calvary and Black Teeth berserkers working together? It didn’t make any sense to the spirit, but that’s exactly what was happening. The fire spirit had fought enough real wars with soldiers wearing fire forged armor and wielding its steel as well as its flames to know that this was an ambush. It was a classic pincer move, and it was almost as ashamed that it had been caught unawares as it was angry that it was losing so many of its warriors.

This was a trap that had already been sprung, and it could see that there would be no survivors. Krulm’venor accepted that, what it could not accept was being outwitted by a goblin chieftain, or the idea that two different tribes had suddenly started working together. This had something to do with those strange yellow skulls. It was sure of that much.

Ch. 20 - A Growing Threat

As the new chieftain of the larger tribe, Grod immediately went on a rampage in every direction. He knew the meaning of neither caution nor restraint. Under his bloody leadership, it might have seemed to the surrounding tribes that the only thing that changed was the pace of the killing and the body count. That was only true on the surface though. Everything had changed when the Gold Skulls had defeated and absorbed the Dog Eaters. That boost in size and capability gave their brutality a crucial new element it had never had before: speed. After so much fighting, the dog boys that rode their hounds were too few in number to turn the tide in any direct confrontation, but as scouts and messengers they were critical. They could also pick off, or at least distract the most troublesome elements of other tribes, like archers and shamans.

Suddenly his three war bands could be practically everywhere at once. Nowhere was safe anymore. Every prime watering hole and hunting ground became the exclusive property of the Golden Skulls, and any tribe that chose to test those boundaries quickly suffered for it.

Grod had been infected by the darkness. Not just by its strength and inhuman healing either by this point. The greed had infected him too. In time that would make him an ineffective leader. The swamp knew that, but for now it was an effective combination. He not only coveted everything of any value, but he had the strength to take it from whoever was keeping it from him.

Just like that, being a neighbor to the Gold Skulls became a death sentence as they expanded relentlessly, in almost all directions. Only the Burning Skulls were inexplicably spared after they’d been neutered so violently, and that minor miracle was all thanks to the guidance of the swamp. Pieces that the goblins could never understand were slowly falling into place. It would need human help to capture the angry fire god of that tribe who fascinated the Lich at the center of that dark whirlpool so much. The last thing it wanted was for his pet goblins to snuff it out before it could study the rival spirit. So they were left to suffer and lick their wounds in their few remaining warrens while Grod’s minions focused on the rest of the hinterlands.

They responded to that order with glee, cutting a wide swath across the hills with their nightly raids and wars. The blood-soaked land felt almost as much like home now as the swamp. Sped along by the constant death and the totems that its tribe put up obsessively now, the red clay and rocky outcroppings had become a place of power, and it would walk them at night, gazing off into the distance, always hungering for more.

After the Dog Eaters fell, the sharp spears lasted less than two weeks. It was almost anticlimactic. Even with their superior weapons, they simply had no answer to the Gold Skulls unrelenting bloodlust. Their territory abutted the western hills where the boulder fields gave way to scrubby trees that eventually became a primeval pine forest. That darkness was outside the swamp’s domain, but it would add to it eventually. From the towering pines in the west to the distant mountains in the north, it would allow nothing to exist beyond its reach.

Though Grod and his inner circle continued to favor their teeth and claws as they devoured their enemies to feed the swamps hunger just as much as their own, the weapons of the Sharp Spears proved to be a bigger boon than even the dog boys of the last tribe to fall before them had been. With better weapons and stronger warriors than the Bone Gnawers and the Stone Fists to the north, the biggest enemy of all quickly became distance. Soon their command over all the lands that were a night's march in any direction was absolute, save only for the tiny cave systems that were still defended by the Burning Skulls. There was only so much territory that a warband could navigate in a single day, and only so much the swamp could do to aid its minions once they left its territory for the mountain foothills.

The goblins and their bloodlust would not be denied though, so as they set about finding new tribes to war with, and marked their new territories with reckless abandon, the darkness focused its attention elsewhere. In six months, the goblins had gone from a local danger to a regional threat. The size of the Gold Skull tribe had doubled and then doubled again in that time due to forced recruiting more than anything. They numbered over a thousand now, and more were flocking to their banner every day in an effort to avoid becoming casualties. Grod was a boss of bosses now and sat on a blood drenched throne that none of his rivals could hope to climb.

As far as it could tell none of the humans that he had studied had any idea. Lord Garvin certainly had no idea that a terrible army was growing on his doorstep. That man’s kingdom might be running just fine, but it was no thanks to him. He was in a perpetual stupor as he sought to escape the dreams. Alcohol wasn’t strong enough to keep the darkness at bay though. All his drinking would do was turn his muscles to fat and the respect of people closest to him into apathy. That was fine with the swamp. The duller than man became the brighter his replacement would shine.

Kalvun was a rising star in the court of Fallravea. While his brothers were away, he had the spotlight all to himself, and as he showed off the new and more accurate map which he’d had very little to do with actually creating, he received accolades from everyone worth knowing in the city. The map itself didn’t tell the darkness anything it didn’t already know, but it was still clarifying. The whole area was a minor peninsula in the grand scheme of things, and the Oroza snaked from north to south before emptying in the Sudder Sea. on the west the territory it could possibly control was bounded by mountains, but on the east side, across the river were fertile grasslands that might hold all manner of human lives just waiting to be devoured.

It wasn’t long after that, the swamp began to give the boy dreams of his next mission. They always started out the same: as lonely, trackless plains far to the west of Fallravea, passed the furthest farms that his father collected taxes on. Each time the boy wondered where he was, but as soon as he looked at the map in his hands, the answer was clear: he was in the west, and he was on a mission for his dark master. The map didn’t show the political boundaries between the counties, and the cities and roads that were marked upon it were incidental.

What really mattered was the gray stain that was darkest in the swamps and the foothills that bordered them. Fallravea had some darkness too, and much of the southern part of the Oroza was polluted by it too, but the focus was definitely the swap. Amongst all the darkness though, there was a single golden ‘X’ in the foothills of the Wodin Spine Mountains. It was an obvious enough goal, but night by night the dream changed. In some versions, the trek there was easy, and in others, the expedition was assailed constantly by goblins.

After some research Kalvun started to plan, and night by night he argued with his father that they should add a map of their western lands to go with the one he’d just finished off the river. The argument that proved to be the most successful was convincing him that it would strengthen their case about the disputed border region with Lindvell county to the west. In truth it didn’t matter who the hills belonged to. Neither Lord had bothered to build roads to them because of their terrible soil and questionable value. Besides that, they were well known to be infested with goblins and other monsters. In the end all the land belonged to the high king, and the lords were merely stewards of it. It had long been a bone of contention between Lord Garvin, who was the undisputed master of the river and Lord Hamish who controlled the western coast and the dark forests that lay upon them.

Finally, one night at dinner, he relented. “Alright lad - I hear you. I’ll fund your little expedition on two conditions.”

“Thank you, father,” Kalvun said sweetly. At this distance the swamp was forced to watch the exchange through his father's eyes because of his weak hold on the boy, but it found it interesting that Lord Garvin could see none of his son’s vicious nature that was so obvious to the swamp.

Did that mean that the young viscount was an excellent actor, or merely that the father was oblivious? The swamp couldn’t say, but it was an interesting detail worth exploring more.

“You know those lands are infested with goblins, and while they may not be much in the daytime, when night falls, they can swarm by the hundreds,” the Lord cautioned. “I’ll let you go, but only with two score of knights at your back, and your solemn word that you will return as soon as there is trouble.

The swamp took a sick pleasure in how far this man had fallen. There was a time, only a few years ago, when he’d thrown caution to the wind only to have all his fearlessness and bravado smashed against the undead of the swamps. Now he was afraid of a few goblins. The irony was delicious, especially since he had every reason to be afraid, even if he was only jumping at shadows now.

“Of course, father,” Kalvun lied smoothly enough that his father couldn’t see it, but the swamp knew who the boy’s true master was. “I want to expand our lands and help the kingdom grow. You and Leo are welcome to keep all the adventure to yourself.”

“One day you’ll learn that there’s more to life than books, son,” Lord Gavin laughed, even though the only part of the whole thing that was funny was the idea that none of it was true. Kalvun’s eldest brother Leo the second might pretend to emulate his father during his glory days, but they were almost a decade behind him now. The man would never pick up a sword in anger again, and it was only because of his power that everyone around him continued to humor him.

Eventually plans were set and a few weeks later the boy started west along with a cook, a cartographer, two surveyors, three servants, four wagons, six teamsters, nine horses, and two dozen knights under his command. It was an extravagant, and ostensibly very safe expedition. Afterall, who would trouble the boy when he had his own personal army? They had a simple mission: travel west, update the maps, and if they encountered anything dangerous, they were to come home immediately.

The swamp didn’t care about any of that though. Even Kalvun, as useful a tool as he was, was utterly disposable. All the swamp wanted now was that fire spirit, its gold, and as much bloodshed as possible. This expedition promised to give it all that and so much more. It had to wait only a little longer until everything was in place.