Tenebroum Ch. 34-36 (Patreon)

Note: As promised 3 more chapters! Two more weeks of this and we can see about getting some bonus chapters for everyone else (though the Patreon will stay 8 weeks ahead.) 

Ch. 34 - Regaining Control

The swamp was dying.

It was a slow process that would be measured in years, but the darkness could feel it just the same. Day by day, the waters receded from the shallowest edges of its domain, and what had once been shallow lagoons or deep pits of mud slowly solidified into soil. The grasses came after that, binding all that sand and silt to the ground like a thousand, thousand little ropes that sought to restrain the darkness and separate it from the world above. No matter how slow it was, it was a process that was impossible to hide.

It wasn’t a secret, even though his figurehead Kelvun thought it was. The reason was clear. A great gouge had been cut through the whole area, and every day a little more of its dark water left to poison the Oroza. Five years ago that might have been enough to slay the darkness, or at least cripple it. Back then it had been the murky waters as much as it had been an unquiet spirit.

Now it was merely a nuisance.

The falling waters affected the flora and fauna of the region even more than the cholerium affected the animals that dwelled in the river as whole ecosystems were overrun, but none of that affected the darkness that had been incubated in its heart for so long. The boy had tried to slay the monster that had haunted his dreams, but he had succeeded only in striking at the sloughed off skin of a snake that had long since molted and metamorphized into something all the more terrible.

In time the lich would repay the insult with interest, but for now it merely bided its time. For so long it had been a region or a place more than a person, but its lengthy duel with the river dragon had forced it to narrow its worldview to a fine point for so long that it had started to identify with a body again. With its statue still body that was nothing more than a gold clad corpse. That was one more thing that would have to be fixed. It had labored at length to build ingenious creations like the swamp dragon, the dark messenger, and its new ferryman, but in all this time it had not improved the only corpse that really mattered in the whole dungeon: its own.

Everything that it’s foolish Count had done was to the good anyway, whether the lordling knew it or not. The swamp needed blood and souls more than it needed privacy or seclusion now, and as the waters receded, they were replaced with rich black earth that the farmers were flocking to. In time those farmers would have families and build villages. Those populations would grow even larger until towns erupted, each with hundreds of souls waiting to be devoured. In that sense, the darkness was sowing seeds of its own, even if it would be years or decades before its bloody harvest arrived.

The Count had apparently put out a call for all the poor and landless to move to the region, and in exchange for the hard work of taming the land they would be given tenancy for free. The darkness had neither known nor cared about the foolish and short-sighted offer until it found the offer in the dreams of hundreds, but it was interesting nonetheless. All these souls had left their homeland for a better life, and they had come like sheep to the slaughter for a better life. They brought their own gods and faiths with them, but none of them found much purchase in ground that was already owned by the darkness.

It was subverting existing faiths faster than the servants of those superstitions could even attempt to tie it down. Already the friezes that were being painted for the new temple to the river dragon Oroza depicted her as a drowning victim rather than the queen of the river that she usually was, and no one seemed to object. Why should they? They knew it to be true deep down. Especially the priests he’d given them vision through her as to how far she’d fallen. She was neither a swamp dragon nor a river dragon anymore. She was a leviathan, and she relentlessly hunted anything that thought of itself as the Oroza from one end of the river to the other, leaving the spiritual ecosystem of the place just as tattered and threadbare as her worshipers’ faith.

The lich had thought that the river dragon was just the largest of the spirits in the river it had seen so far, but it had been wrong. At least according to the cult that surrounded her, she was more than that. In the vernacular of the region she was a small god, a being of local and narrow powers, that was powerful nonetheless. That meant that she was closer to what Krulm’venor had been, than the fallen wretch that the godling was now. It was an interesting idea that had provoked much discussion between the Lich and its ghastly library.

Was the only difference between the highest gods and the lowest river spirit or faded ghost merely a question of magnitude? It would have thought that there should be more to it than that, but increasingly it appeared that that might be the case.

She was a being of pure essence and water, well at least she had been. Now she wore the same decaying flesh as the rest of its servants and the chains that were both magical and spiritual in nature. She’d once been the guardian of her ecosystem, but now she was merely an attack dog for his domain.

She wouldn’t be the last though.

The same techniques that forced her to obey him were even now being tested on a skeleton of steel too strong for Krulm’venor to melt, but even when the runes were complete and understood, such a complicated work of art would take a long time to forge without the godlings help, and there was no way it would help the lich willingly at this point. The tiny spark of life that fire spirit still had served two purposes: to bluster in rage and to scream in pain. Beyond that its lantern flickered in silence in the Lich’s innermost sanctum like the forgotten toy it was.

The darkness had moved on to other, more loyal servants. Right now it was in the midst of gathering the lizardmen tribes and removing them from their habitat before the humans decided to mobilize men to purge the fierce hunters themselves. The lich knew how that ended and had no desire to waste that strength in the embalming vats of the sprawling second floor of its dungeon.

The ferryman was taking them north, in small groups to the foot of the Wodenspine Mountains. The lake valleys they were being delivered to were a little cold for the reptiles, but the swamp had already proven to its own satisfaction that they would be able to hibernate through the winter. That wasn’t the important part. It didn’t need them to flourish there, it needed them to kill.

In the swamps the lizard men were the top of the food chain, but in those treacherous mountains they would be somewhat closer to the bottom. It was no matter. The swamp would gift them the same deathless strength that it had previously lent to The Black Teeth. They were being relocated for one purpose: to bring the lich the corpses of true monsters that it could use as the raw material for even greater horrors. Their formidable strength alone wouldn’t be enough to bring down a manticore or a griffon, but the darkness would make sure that they survived the attempt to try again. Their tireless devotion to it through the years had earned the tribes that much. This time, their totem poles would rise in their new home and reflect all the strange creatures that they killed in its name.

There were only so many ways you could manipulate the bones and spirits of men and common beasts before they were warped beyond recognition after all, and it would need more than the zombie legions it had and the goblin tribes that were slowly being reformed under the leadership of The Dark Eye tribe for the wars that were to come. The goblins might be useful against their southern neighbor at least, though it would be a long time until the fingers of the tribes once more curled into a fist worth using against any opponent, and unless it tamed Krulm’venor once more, that fist would lack any real force.

It could feel Lindvell stirring to the west, even as Dutton eye’d its neighbor enviously from across the river to the east. The enmity between Greshan and the county of Lindvell which hugged the coast were well known and long-standing, but the discovery of the region’s new gold mine in the red hills had added their other neighbor, the county of Dutton to the list. For a long time they had been the richer of the two river dominated regions. They had better soil and consequently, more people than Greshan. The poisoning of the river was affecting the other kingdom more though, if only because of the direction that the lich drew the mana. The loss of poor share croppers to better lands merely added insult to injury.

The fool Kelvun was more obsessed with treachery in his inner circle than he was with the enemies that were beginning to gather in all directions. Ostensibly they were all stewards of the king’s lands, and wars between those lands were supposed to be rare, but if the King felt threatened by the glorious accent of Kelvun “Goblin’s Bane” Garvin, then he might allow such a thing. And if a war came to pace, the lich had no doubt that both of Greshan’s neighbors would strike at once.

Necessarily, such a war would have to be one fought between mortal powers, the Lich thought with frustration. It would be easy enough for it to field an army of the dead and crush either region, but that would draw in the church, and upset all the Lich’s plans. No, since it’s pet lordling was busy chasing the skirts of barmaids in Blackwater Landing, it would fall to the darkness to stop the war before it could get started.

Normally it would be all in favor of a little war. Some infighting that left thousands dead while nothing else really changed was exactly what the Lich had just done to the county with its goblin army. A new army would remove his pawn though, and with it the gold that had been promised to it, and for the darkness, that was intolerable. Something had to be done, and for better or worse, the only tool it had that could work such a miracle was a plague.

It had been cooking up several, using the gray shivers as a basis, but until recently it had been focusing on creating diseases that maximized suffering rather than contagion. That had changed. Now it wanted something that didn’t just make the afflicted pray for death, it wanted something that made sure that where one victim fell with a fever ten more would soon follow.

This would take time, so for every minute the lich wasted on building the perfect disease that would kill off enough men to ensure another war free year or two, it increased the boy’s paranoia just a bit more in his sleep. If the lich wasn’t going to be able to focus on what was truly important, then neither would its servant.

Ch. 35 - Every Single Body

“I’m telling you, it doesn’t make sense,” Todd said, mostly to himself as he sat against the wheel of the wagon that held the bodies and took advantage of the scant shade that it provided.

The other boys were letting him rest because he’d gotten overheated from the work they were doing. That’s what he’d told them at least, but he doubted they believed him. Why would they? It wasn’t a particularly hot day, so sun sickness was unlikely. Cowardice or enervation at the sight of the corpses that he and the other orphans had been charged with burying in the churchyard today was much more likely.

That was doubly true considering he’d fainted right after one of the sackcloth bags had ripped open, spilling limbs and viscera onto the patchy yellow grass. Even now, while he was still recovering from his embarrassing fainting spell, and very carefully starting at his own feet to avoid seeing anything else that might not have been cleaned up yet.

“Is he still talking?” Bradwin asked Cole, pretending he couldn’t hear Todd’s muttering.

“Talk? All I hear is croaking. I don’t speak animal,” Cole answered. They both laughed at that, but even their jokes at his expense didn’t stop their digging. There were four corpses today, and if they had any prayer of getting all of them in the ground before dinner, they needed to hustle.

“Very funny, guys.” Todd answered, rolling his eyes. “You see what I mean though, don’t you?”

He tried his best to play off jokes like that, because he knew that they would only get worse if he revealed that they got under his skin. He didn’t think he was ugly enough really be compared to a frog of course, but he was smaller than the other boys, and his name… well no one would accuse the lads that took their frustrations out on him of being clever.

Garvin’s gift, as the priests insisted they call the monastery was still only half built, but even the red clay walls that were slowly rising a little bit every day, and the tents that sheltered inside them from the wind were a kinder fate than he’d be able to find anywhere else after his village had been wiped out, and his family with it.  He tried to be grateful to the gods for what little they gave him, even if he had to deal with this kind of nonsense every day…

“Okay TOAD, I’ll listen, but when you’re done with your fairy story your break is over and, and you’re getting back in the pit to dig. I’m not working late because you’ve been out of the water too long.” Bradwin answered, interrupting that train of thought. “Explain it again, but this time use your small words. Cole - he ain't so smart as the rest of us.”

“I’m smart enough to know I can kick your ass,” Cole spat back, but he did nothing beyond that because he was precisely smart enough to know that Bradwin would break his bones if he tried.

In the little group of orphans that was slowly building up in this backwater gutter of human suffering there was no one stronger than Bradwin, and no one weaker than Todd. The older boy ruled over the rest of them when none of the adults were around. If that made Brad the King of the hill, then that made Todd the jester, because he was the butt of almost every joke.

“Think about it,” he said starting from the beginning because he couldn’t remember how much of this he’d said out loud and how much of it had been in his head before he’d fainted. “This month there’s been what - 18 bodies including these one?”

“Sounds right?” Brad grunted, brining up another shovel full. “But that’s not so many. There’s hundreds of miners and thousands of goblins - sometimes they’re going to kill each other. It’s bound to happen. It’s the will of the gods, the priests said so.”

That part was true. The priests had given many long sermons to the boys about the mysterious will of the divine. He was sure that the message was meant to reassure the orphans, given that the cause of their parents deaths had been goblin raids in nearly every instance, but that just raised other questions for Todd.

“Sure. People die,” he agreed, wanting to move on to his main point. “But those 18 bodies are from four raids, and every one of them was on caravans going to the canal, not from the canal.”

“Ohhhh,” Cole chimed in. “That’s what you’re croaking about. You’re saying that the goblins are following them from here to the—”

“Of course that’s what he’s saying. It’s obvious,” Brad answered. “Everyone knows the caravans to the mines are guarded better than the ones leaving it.”

That wasn’t true. It was actually the opposite of true. The groups that left with the mines laden with doré bars had almost double the guards of those coming from the canal bringing fresh workers and food from civilization which made it even less likely they’d be the ones to be attacked, but correcting the bigger boys would likely get him a bruised for his efforts, so he tried another tactic.

“But there are only a few more guards,” he lied, “wouldn’t the goblins be just as drawn to both groups? The people coming here bring travel slower because they bring livestock with them, but they always seem to attack the ones carrying gold. I think goblins would be more interested in a pig than in—”

“Why wouldn’t the goblins want gold?” Cole asked. “Everyone wants gold. Hell - I want gold, but the priests make us turn it all in. Sounds like your theory is full of holes to me, Toad.”

“Yeah,” Bradwin echoed as he stopped digging and climbed out of the half dug grave. “Your facts are all wrong. Cole found two bodies just the other day that had no gold, because he’s not as lucky as me. I think just saying shit to get out of digging.”

Todd stood up and grabbed the offered handle, but he was careful not to look at Cole as he climbed into the pit. He knew what kind of glare he’d see on the other boy’s face. He’d given away too much with that statement without thinking. Just because no one but him had noticed Cole filching didn’t mean that it hadn’t happened.

But Cole was never supposed to know that he’d noticed, and Todd had done a good job of keeping that secret, until now. Since Brad hadn’t picked up on it, Todd hoped that the revelation would only earn him a little extra harassment until Cole felt like he’d gotten his retribution. As the grave digging wore on, Todd seemed to be proven right. The older boys were a little meaner than usual, but it didn’t escalate to violence, so he just kept his head down and his shovel moving until he was so exhausted that he worried that he might actually faint from the heat.

It was only after dinner, when everyone was preparing to go to bed that Cole cornered him white he was securing the shutters on the south wall.

“What are we going to do with you, Toad?” he growled, grabbing Todd by the scruff of the neck and pushing him hard into the wall. “You’re always noticing things. You keep it up and one day you’re going to notice so much that a beating isn’t going to cut it and someone is going to have to shut you up for good.”

“I-I don’t know anything and I didn’t see anything,” Todd blurted out, struggling weakly in the grip of the other boy. If he screamed now someone might intervene, but they would probably just watch, and if Cole had an audience he would feel obliged to put on a show, which would be so much worse than taking whatever was coming in private.

“Of course you don’t,” Cole said, grinding his victim’s face into the sun baked wall. “You didn’t see anything, you don’t know anything, and even if you told someone they wouldn’t believe you. But worthless as you are, I do have one question for you, since you know so much.”

“Of course! Anything,” Todd said, willing to say whatever he needed to, to stop this from getting worse.

“You said that every victim of the goblins had gold? Do you really think they’re drawn to it?” Cole asked. “Let's say I have this friend - and he has a few nuggets. Enough to get far, far away from this hellhole - how can he get the canal safely if the goblins are drawn to his stash?”

“Of course,” Todd squealed, trying to choke out words from the way Cole gripped his neck. “You can… you can…

“Hmmm? What’s that? I can’t hear you…” he interrupted, pressing Todd painfully against the wall again by his throat. “If you’re such a smart little frog, then you’ll know the answer to a simple question like that, won’t you?”

“With coal dust!” Todd blurted out the first stupid thing he could think of. “Goblins are attracted to shiny things because they live in the dark. If you cover them in coal dust there will be no shine to attract them!”

For a moment Todd thought he was going to get his brains bashed in for saying something so stupid. Instead, the grip slackened, and eventually Cole released him.

“Coal dust, huh? That’s pretty smart for a Toad. That will fool the priests too if someone tries to search me. Maybe you’re smart enough to stay quiet after all…” Cole looked at him appraisingly, obviously trying to decide if it would be more trouble than it was worth to silence the only other person that knew he had such immense illicit wealth hidden away.

Todd said nothing. He just backed is far into the corner from the other boy as he could.

“I’ll tell you what Toad,” Cole finally said, conspiratorially. “I’m… I mean my friend is getting out of here in a few days. He plans to make a run for the canal on the morning the next boat is due. If you don’t say shit between now and then, well then he won’t have to gut you like the gobs gutted your parents. Are we clear?”

Todd didn’t trust his voice, so he just nodded vigorously until the other boy left. He wasn’t even sure if Cole had a knife, but he was sure that anyone with eyes that dead could do what Cole had just threatened. People disappeared all the time in the red hills, and no one was going to save him. As it was, he was too shaken up and didn’t even have the presence of mind to be angered by the crassness of Cole’s threat until he was laying awake in his cot.

He tried to be optimistic. There was no reason that a tough kid like Cole couldn’t make it as far as Blackwater or Tagel, not that it mattered to Todd. Whether Cole escaped or he got killed along the way, he knew he’d never see Cole again.

He knew in his bones that if the bully tried to leave with that ill-gotten gold the goblins would find him and rip him to pieces though. Todd didn’t know why, but he knew that the goblins were drawn to the people that carried stolen gold from the mine. It had to be cursed or something.

As he lay there in the tent listening to the snoring of the other boys, Todd almost felt guilty enough to try to tell Cole the truth, but he decided against it. Trying to save him would be the right thing to do, but he didn’t feel the need to do the right thing for someone that threatened to gut him like the goblins had gutted his parents. If he told the priests it might save the other boy's life, but that good deed might just cost Todd his, and even if that's what the gods would have wanted him to do, he had no interest in making such a selfless trade for such a miserable boy.

No, everything in Todd’s life would get a little bit easier if Cole wasn’t around, he decided. It was better this way.

Ch. 36 - Big Game

The darkness didn’t pay much attention to the tribe's transplanted lizard men for months, because it had more important matters to deal with. So, it missed how much they struggled at first in the unfamiliar territory that were the high valley’s of the Woden Spine mountains, but even with those hardships, they were hardy creatures that still thrived. At least, they did once their wanderings led them to find a series of hot springs and sulfurous vents that would help them survive the winter without going into hibernation.

Even with that advantage though, building a new camp and erecting a new totem to their dark god was a process that took months, not weeks. The first creature they carved into that pole was a ogre that ruled the nearby swamp. It claimed the lives of two lizard warriors, and injured several more so badly that they would have perished too if the Lich had not shown them its favor and blessed them with a deathless strength that made it all but impossible for disease or blood loss to claim them while their bodies knitted themselves back together.

Most of the lizard men did their best to resist the darkness that offered itself so freely to them in those moments of mortality, in the way that the goblins never did. Not Tsson’vek though, that hunter embraced them, and the anger that came with them. This interested the swamp on several levels.

In the past the lizard men had been so alien that it had only been able to touch their minds with great difficulty while they slept in a place of power. Their minds had become no easier to read in the decades since that first summer, but the darkness’ power had doubled several times since then. Until now, it had observed their habits, and even some of their religious ceremonies, but it had never gotten so deeply inside their head to find out an individual name. It didn’t even know that individuals had name.

What it did understand was the base desire he found lurking inside that primitive mind. Behind the sluggish thoughts and the black and white vision that saw less than a fragment of the world that the Lich could see, it found a deep throbbing hunger. Tsson’vek hungered for food and mates, he hungered for power, but most of all for dominance. The goblin mind wanted to devour the world for the thrill of killing and bloodshed, but lizard men, or at least this lizard man had a desire to possess and control then lands that would fulfill its other needs more than it desired the killing that would take place to ensure it was successful.

It was an interesting juxtaposition that left the darkness somewhere between the two viewpoints. It needed to murder the living to feast on their souls, but it wanted all the lands it could see as well due to the primal covetousness that its dark heart of gold inspired. The payment’s of its little lording was helping with that of course, but no matter how much he paid, it would never truly be enough for the Lich. One day it would rule over the entire world, and nothing would stop it.

Tsson’vek had more reasonable ambitions, though. It didn’t even want to rule over its tribe. Not yet at least. He was too young, and he hadn’t made kills that were impressive enough kills to impress a mate, let alone one that would be memorialized on their nearly bare totem. The closest it had come was to narrowly avoid death after his ambush failed to slay the swamp ogre. Even poisoned that behemoth had managed to swing its club with such force that all he could do was lay broken in the mud while the other members of its hunting pack. While the rest of the tribe celebrated the victory with a grand feast, he had laid there for weeks waiting for death.

Death came for him eventually, but instead of claiming him and dragging him from the mortal world to the hunting ground of his ancestors, it held the darkness at bay while he healed. A few weeks later, all that he had to show his foolhardy brush with mortality was a number of jagged black scars that meandered through his dull green scales.

It was a harrowing experience, but that brush with the spirits of darkness changed him forever. He became more aggressive after that, and more eager to prove himself. This wasn’t just to secure mates and nests when spring came though: it was a desire to please the dark god that watched over them. Now that he had felt its strength course through his shattered body, even its limited reptile mind knew that it could have more of that power if it gave the darkness what it wanted, and what it wanted were the totems and the corpses that came from ever more dangerous hunts.

If that was what those dark, deathless eyes wanted, then Tsson’vek would bring them down. The chimera, the wyvern, and even the griffon - he wasn’t as strong as any of them, but he would be. He would bring all of them down, or die in the attempt.

. . .

The desire to please it was so strong that it was hard not to think of the lizard men as its most loyal pets, the Lich thought idly while it watched it’s fleshcrafters at work. Zombies only obeyed because they had to. They were literally powerless to say no to it, much as some of the spirits that were bound to their own rotting corpses might want to. That level would have been enough to warm its heart, if it had one. They were practically like the hounds that the humans seemed to love so much, albeit ones that were significantly more useful and deadly.

Generosity wasn’t an emotion that the darkness was capable of. It was even rarer than happiness or gratitude in its dark and flinty heart, but as it watched the fleshcrafters meticulously skin the ogre than the reptiles had brought down for it felt something almost that strong for the first time in a long time.

The beast was over nine feet tall, with thickly muscled limbs that were as thick as a normal man. Even it had been resurrected like this, it would have been a terror, but the Lich wouldn’t dream of doing something so wasteful. The raw potential was nothing compared to what it would be when it had tainted and reinforced every inch of the Ogre and filled it with so much rage that it would never know peace. Right now they were in the earliest stages of preparation. The skin had not yet been tanned, nor had the hundreds of steel plates that would eventually make up its second skin been riveted to it yet. That would take weeks, and all the while, the fleshcrafters would be carving the creature up, dissecting one muscle at a time to be embalmed and treated, so they could get to the skeleton and reinforce it.

Of course, not all the flesh would be worth preserving, and the bones would be moved into the beetle vat until they were entirely flensed. Even though the rest of the process took weeks, the final step took only hours. A living body could be devoured down to the bones in less than a day, but a thoroughly butchered corpse took far less time. It was only after all that was done that the entire skeleton would be submerged into molten bronze, and the rebuilt a layer at a time until it wasn’t just an unstoppable juggernaut, but an undying one as well.

The Lich didn’t need to be involved with any of this of course. That was why it had created its fleshcrafters to run its abattoirs. They handled all the mundane tasks like this one. Creating a war zombie was nothing special. The Lich had amassed dozens like this in the vaults where they awaited use. In the ogres case, the only thing that was special was the specimen, not the technique. That was why it built all of its most skilled necromantic chirurgeons with the souls of doctors and healers. Their souls might twist and rebel at being forced to do such grisly work, but they had a talent that was impossible for almost anyone else to match.

It certainly didn’t hurt that their own bodies were modified to make them even better at these tasks. Their necks were longer and more prehensile than any living man, and their arms each had an extra set of joints. The only way the one might tell one from another was the number of eyes and fingers each had. Five eyes was the least number of eyes a servant could have in a role like this to get the proper depth perception of course, but some of the newest ones had almost twice that. Fingers though - fingers were purely a function of skill. Not counting the four armed lovers that still labored here in the depth, its first chirugeon only had 13 fingers, some of which ended in fine clamps and blades, but the famed doctor Zumassen who had disappeared one spring not on a voyage down river - he had 19 fingers, and though he might wail and gnash his teeth at his current fate, that grief and horror never stopped him from making perfect cuts every time.

That was why he was assisting the Lich and his library on the most delicate of tasks: the forging of a human spine. Each vertebra was invested with a single human soul that had died violently due to fire. The pieces were cast in bronze before they were carved into perfect shape, and fitted together. It was only after the runes of binding had been carved into them, and they had been gilded so that they would never tarnish, that ligaments of thin wire had been attached and woven together into patterns that were a nightmarish mockery of real muscles. The webs of steel had one important advantage over preserved tissue though: they were entirely fireproof.

If all went well this would function as the prototype for its own new vessel, but more testing was required first. This project was less than a quarter done, the Lich would leave it to it’s minions once it had completed the most critical steps. It was even more critical than the cyclopian skull that was being formed from steel at the forges even now. The skull would merely house the thing that powered this terrible body. It was the spine that was the leash that would bind the automaton to its will. The Lich had learned much in the year since he’d bound the river dragon to its swamp dragon in a match that was truly made in hell. Even as strong as that creation was, the Oroza had threatened to crack it on several occasions, necessitating further upgrades.

That was even more true now that worship of her was resurgent. Gone were the temples to the languid serpent or the verdant lady though. Now the people focused on the raging tide, or worse, the hag of the delta or the crone of the tide waters. Where once the stories of her were about how she brought life and washed away evil with her purifying waters, now they were about the terrible gifts she would grant to those who sacrificed to her. The people of the area still believed that river would give them what they need, but in the back of their mind they understood that someone would have to pay for that bounty.

It was almost a pity that the energy from all those sacrifices, and the power from all those prayers was stolen from her as soon as she received them. Instead, it was channeled to her captor, making it ever stronger while she writhed and withered, just like her namesake at the turning of the seasons.