Tenebroum Ch. 24-25 (Patreon)

Ch. 24 - Muddy Waters

Everything was in motion now. The swamp was used to having days and weeks to plan and decide, but for reasons not entirely within its control. One moment it was designing it’s first spirit traps, and commanding its dark messenger to lay a few of them up and down the river, so it could test them, and the next it looked up and everything was burning.

The Viscount at least was safe enough still, the swamp thought as it briefly checked on their progress. The men he commanded had spent days putting up temporary structures on the area that had once been the lizard men’s camp, and before that the mage’s island. It was only now that they were getting ready to build something more permanent, although they seemed more interested in setting up a smithy and a kiln than building anything that had any true purpose.

There was no time to study the folly of men now though, because the golden skulls had run rampant in the west, and village after village had been burned to the ground. The only people that had survived the onslaught were the ones that had fled.

The first thing that the swamp did was to force the infernal creatures to slow their withdrawal, and the second thing it did was to slowly pull the horde back together as it moved east and south. The green skins could only succeed like this as long as they faced no real resistance. Against an army, or even a large patrol, they would be hopelessly shattered.

It was only when this was done, that it reached out to the minds of the region that had been infected with the Bard’s songs to find out where the human warriors and adventurers were. It wasn’t a difficult search. It found a few clustered around campfires, halfway between the fertile lands around Fallravea and the villages that were currently being sacked by the bulk of the goblin forces.

It wasn’t just a middling group of adventurers, either. The minds he could peer through the dreams of were just men-at-arms in a much larger force, that numbered over a hundred men, including knights and a corps of trained crossbowmen that had loaders and pavises. Apparently, Kelvun’s oldest brother had decided to step out of the shadow that the darkness had placed over him with his younger brother’s victory in the most forceful way possible.

That wouldn’t do at all, the swamp decided as it felt anger circulate through it like a deep current. Even if it wasn’t already hungry for the older boy’s death, and eager to drive another knife in to the old count’s heart, he never would have allowed so many of his pawns to be displaced so easily.

There were no easy answers, though. Not without revealing its undead to the world so long after it had withdrawn them. No - it would need another course of action.

After two days of deliberation, it woke Kruln’venor with a bonfire large enough that it had a mind to speak with. This time it did not toy with it though, instead it made the prideful godling an offer.

“Serve me and I will allow you to live and prosper, Kruln’venor,” the darkness intoned voicelessly. “Cross me and you will only be of further use in my experiments.”

“Why would I ever give a monster like you anything,” the spirit crackled. “You have taken everything from me already!”

“I did, and I can do it again. I beat you, so now I use you how I will,” the swamp agreed, “But if you were useful to me, I might be willing to give you back a few of the things you held most dear. Fuel. Influence. Blood.”

“You think I would serve you for a single bonfire?” the fire spirit spat.

“You think that is all I can offer you?” the darkness would have laughed if it was capable of such a thing. Instead, it just pitied the poor limited mind that was barely more capable than the smoke it was made of. “Even now, my goblins ravage the west. Soon they will take a human army. Every village that burns could be your feast, and every and some of the blood that falls could be yours to lap up.”

“You would treat me like a dog?!” The idea seemed to enrage Kruln’venor even more, but even boiling over, it didn’t say no.

“Like a loyal hound,” the lich agreed. “As long as you obey my commands, I will give you your freedom, and you will feast almost as well as I do.”

“What must I do,” the fire spirit said, admitting defeat, even if its pride would never let it truly kneel.

“You must help the goblins raze the human kingdom to ashes until I decide they have created enough fear and death to suit my needs,” the swamp commanded. “Do this, and you will be a servant instead of a prisoner.”

The ripples in the smoke and fire spoke of frustrated rage, but in the end it didn’t argue further, and agreed to help the swamp in the battles that were to come. The Lich had no doubt that the spirit was doing this for its own selfish reasons and that its only hope was to gather enough power to escape the grip that the darkness that had on it. Normally, fire and the light it created was the mortal enemy of the dark, but in this case the swamp wasn’t too concerned. Such a paltry mind could never outwit the legion of souls that swirled within its core.

A few days later, when the blacksmith’s forges were lit at what the men had started to call Kelvun’s landing, it was done with a spark of Kruln’venor’s fire. Later that night the first of the goblin shamans started to feel its power flow through them, and as that poor little hamlet burst into flames, a dozen other goblins quickly harnessed the power as well.

The fire godling was no longer just a flickering flame. Even under the thumb of the lich it was already more powerful than it had been in years. The darkness doubt that such a detail mattered to the haughty spirit. No matter how much power Kruln’venor gain, its pride would always be the stronger force.

That would be a problem for another day, though. Now all that mattered were that the goblins were unified, and they had the weapons they needed to boil the human knights in their own armor. It was something that the lich needed, because even with all the gifts it had given Grod, the goblin’s strength and viciousness would do precious little good against plate mail.

After that, the darkness began to steer his war bands north, and night by night they got closer to the Greshen force.

The place that the Lich ultimately chose for the battle wasn’t special. It was just a hill, slightly taller than those around in the middle of the plains. The ground here was still fertile enough that farmers lived here and there, eking out a living. It was far away from anywhere that mattered, though, and at least a two dozen miles outside the lich’s blood soaked domain. That would have made all the difference in the world if it was using its undead minions for this fight, but the goblins could kill anywhere with equal ease, as long as it was night out.

For the past few weeks, Grod’s war bands had been moving from barn to hamlet to homestead, killing anything they could get their hands on before moving on to the next meal, but tonight they would get the fight they had been spoiling for ever since they’d left the red hills. Grod was a brutal warchief, and he didn’t just want death, he wanted victory.

The night started off as quiet as any other, and the small army of men laid out their camp quite sensibly on a defensible hilltop with picket lines, watchmen, and plenty of fires to keep the night at bay. They took no chances, but even their caution wouldn’t save them. Shortly before midnight, a fog began to boil up out of the lowlands that shrouded the surrounding hills. It wasn’t as thick or as overwhelming as the lich would have been able to create in the bounds of its own territory, but it was the most it could do from this distance using its dark messenger and a few trinkets it had created in the course of its experiments on water spirit traps.

That fog wouldn’t have been enough to hide the torches and the horses of a human army, but for bands of goblins, it was more than enough. They crept through the dark, and the wily greenskins were practically on top of the men before they even knew to sound the alarms. The horns eventually sounded, but not before screams of pain had already shattered the stillness of the night.

A hundred men are a fearsome force, but only if they’re wearing more than their small clothes before the battle starts. Some of the warriors had a chance to put on their boots and pants before they charged into battle, but most only had time to pull out their sword or load their crossbow before the fight was joined. Even then, a desperate man with a sharp blade can kill his weight in goblins before he’s brought down, but that hardly mattered when they were so completely outnumbered.

There were a hundred warriors when the fight started, and without anywhere to escape to, even the cowards fought bravely, but a few minutes later, only half that number were still standing. Bravery wasn’t nearly as effective as a charge of heavy horse or a suit of chain mail you were actually wearing. Lying with those fifty dead warriors on the ground were almost three hundred dead goblins, but that barely put a dent in a force that measured over two thousand strong.

In the flickering firelight of the final moments of the battle, the darkness noticed that the Count’s eldest son fought exceptionally well. He was so like his father, the swamp decided, in both skill and vanity. The elder Leon Garvin had been able to fight well too, but that had availed him as little in his fight with the swamp dragon all those years ago, as it would help his son in his fight against the green tide tonight.

In other circumstances he might have grown up to be a true hero, but that was not to be. He’d gone west looking for an easy victory that he could use to return to the spotlight, but he’d found only a painful death instead. Tonight he would be just one more body for the goblins to feast on.

The goblins celebrated their monstrous victory until dawn began to color the sky in the east. Only then did they seek out places to hide from its rays, leaving the sun to find only a corpse strewn field. The hill wasn’t a battlefield, it was a massacre, and over the next few days the carrion eaters that circled would grow so thick that they would all but blot out the sun.

No one but the Lich was ever to see such a beautiful sight, though, because now that there was no real military force outside Fallravea to stop the tide of blood that the goblins were unleashing as they once more moved in all directions to slaughter the simple people of the land before word of the violence could spread fast enough to put the villages that lay ahead on the defensive.

Ch. 25 - Laying the Foundations

Kelvun hated it in the swamp. Even though the heat had dramatically decreased over the last few weeks as fall started to set in, and the biting flies and mosquitoes left him strangely untouched, he was still miserable.

There had been nothing to do here for weeks besides watch other men work, and once the rains had started things had somehow managed to become even more deadly dull, if such a thing was possible. In the evening he’d found a few soldiers to play cards with, but that was it. Anything else his tutors quickly put a stop to, and with the rains he couldn’t even leave the pavilion to escape them. It was truly his version of hell.

Even the dreams had stopped, he thought glumly as he pushed away the grammar book he was supposed to be memorizing.

He had no idea why it would be important to walk out into the swamp in the middle of the night to retrieve a guttering torch and use it to light the forge fires of their newly constructed smithy, but once he’d done so, even the strange dark dreams he had so often finally stilled. That probably meant that he was doing exactly what the swamp wanted of him, of course, but all of that added up to a fate worse than death as far as he was concerned.

Like a condemned man, every day he would listen to the smiths forge a few more links in the three hundred foot chain they were making, while any number of saws and hammers created the timbers that were used in the construction of the tower that would in time become the tax authority for the whole southern reach of the river. It was a shabby little building of timber and stone, and a poor start for what would inevitably become a village, at the very least as far as her was concerned. If it were up to him, he would have commissioned something more beautiful and imposing.

A keep, perhaps. Anything was better than the little drum tower they were building. Because they were mostly using the older stones of a tower that had been erected here previously it was doomed to be an ugly squat little structure. Some of the workers wondered about that, and rumors spread through the camp about the old stories, but the fact that they hadn’t been devoured by a ravaging horde of undead seemed to disprove that this was the site of the swamp dragon massacre.

It was though. That was the only bright spot.

It was the secret he couldn’t tell anyone. They were helping the lich that they hated and feared by rebuilding the very tower that haunted his nightmares as a child. If not for that secret, Kelvun probably would have drowned himself in the river just to have something to do.

He had no idea why the swamp would want a tower or a forge in the heart of its domain, or why it seemed perfectly okay for them to build a pair of sturdy docks, even knowing that those docks would doubtlessly bring more people. It wasn’t his job to know why, though. His job was to do as he was told for another of a year, and then when the title and the lands were his, he could do whatever he wanted to again.

Well, within reason, he corrected himself, as he looked up river at a small barge heading their way. You couldn’t exactly double-cross the devil after you’d made a deal with him, but once he gave Kelvun what he promised, it wouldn’t be such a one-sided relationship between them, where the swamp commanded, and Kelvun did as he was ordered.

He wondered if they had the paperwork and the stamp showing they’d already paid the toll or not. If Tom or Denny had been around, he would have bet them ten obols that they’d never find out. The lich wanted them to finish this chain for the same reason his father did: to get their cut of the river’s wealth. Every day the fishermen took a piece of the Oroza’s infinite bounty, and his father collected some duties at the docks in Fallravea, but everyone that chose to deliver their goods a village or two upriver dodged the taxman completely, and Lord Garvin was tired of not getting his due.

The chain would stop all that. Everyone would have to pay to use the waterway to pass this single point, and whoever that unlucky tax collector was, he would have a small garrison to keep him safe from his unhappy customers.

Kelvun had no idea what lich in the depths of the swamp would want a garrison of soldiers for, or what it would do with the brewers and bordellos that would surely follow, but as long as he was known as Count Kelvun Garvin the first by his next name day, he really didn’t care. He would—

The cane of his letter’s tutor suddenly slammed down hard on the table in front of Kelvun startling him.

“And what is so interesting, Lord Garvin?” Temonen asked, peering down at him through his spectacles.

Kelvun didn’t answer. There wasn’t a point. He just pulled the book close to him and went back to memorizing the conjugation for irregular verbs he doubted he would ever need, like obnubilate and impignorate.

. . .

The lich watched the barge carrying steel ingots and other contraband beneath the thin layer of lumber as it passed down the river along with its young minion. The difference between the two was that the swamp would have its payment though, one way or the other, and since it had chosen not to pay in coin, it would send the swamp dragon to capsize the vessel and devour its crew instead once night fell.

The steel, it could use, but everything else would wash down the river as a warning to the other sailors who might to try its patience in the future.

The swamp wasn’t too concerned with such things, though, and had noticed its passage only by accident while it focused on the hidden currents beneath the water's surface. In the weeks since it had laid its first traps, it had learned much about the water spirits that practically infested the river. It teemed with life, which had turned out to be the real reason why it was always slipping out of the swamps’ grip.

But it had their number now. It could see the way they moved invisibly in the form of currents and waves.

The first traps it had used were crude brass things, and hardly fit for purpose. Most of the spirits they’d managed to trap had suffocated in the tiny vassals and passed away before it could send a servant to retrieve them. After a little trial and error, though, a few living samples had been brought back to the depths alive.

Despite the fact that they were creatures of water and not of fire, they shared a great deal with Kruln’venor, and the swamp had enjoyed devouring them once it had finished studying them. They weren’t quite as delicious as raw and bloody man flesh, but each one had writhed and fought until the end, and been full of a surprising amount of magical essence.

Each one of them had also claimed to be called Oroza.

All of them seemed to think that they were the one true spirit of the river, no matter how big or small they were. It was an interesting question as to whether that was true for all or any of them, but not one that the darkness planned on focusing on right now. It didn’t care what they were, beyond the fact that they were prey. Instead of trying to understand them, it was figuring out how it could use the chain that the humans were building to anchor a series of larger spells across the breadth of the river.

The only problem with that plan was that it would need to rely on Kruln’venor to burn the runes into the iron once the chain was in the water, and outside of battle, it had no faith in that miserable godling to do what it was told.

If the net spell was successful, then it could feast daily on a whole new source of energy to fuel its underground army and their constant efforts to dig its circle. There would probably be some ecological cost to this for the villages and the fishermen down river to have so much energy removed from the world, but that was hardly its problem.

If that didn’t work, well, it had two other ideas to try.

Now that it knew what to look for, the first was to stitch a few souls into the corpses of animals and build mobile hunting traps. It could make such things fairly easily from the preserved corpses of crocodiles. They would lurk beneath the waters waiting to see things that should have been invisible to them, and then bring their fresh quarry back to its lair through the new river entrance its zombies had built on the first floor before it closed the surface entrance, so the humans could build their tower in relative peace.

That would definitely work, but those minions would only ever be able to catch the smallest spirits, and never huge quantities the lich thirsted for.

The second option was far more ambitious, and a great deal more rewarding, but it would involve poisoning the very headwaters of the river itself. It would have to be done at the watershed far up in the Wodin Spine mountains, to the north of here where the river first took shape. If it could possess the river from the first moments it trickled to life, then it should be able to seize all of the energy that was within it for its own use and starve every other spirit in the river of life.

That would require the distillation and use of the unwater element cholerium, in ways that were similar to how it had used stygium to trap Kruln’venor. The only thing that held the lich back from this plan was that it might have unforeseen effects on it. The river was a powerful force, and introducing that much water energy into the dark heart of the lich might only serve to dilute its darkness, at the same time it poisoned the water.

It was a conundrum that would take more study before it was willing to try even a small test. The swamp wanted to consume the river, not be shattered into a thousand petty little spirits that each thought they were the swamp by it.

Time was on its side, though. It could study the problem by day while it watched the goblins burn their way across the plains by night. In the weeks they had been on the move, they’d burned a bloody swath to the west. News had only reached Fallravea a few days ago that his son's army had been massacred, and Count Garvin hadn’t been sober sense.

In time, they would formulate some sort of defense, the swamp was sure, but for now all they could do was mourn and despair as they hid inside their homes in fear of what was coming next.