Tenebroum Ch. 42-43 (Patreon)

Ch. 42 - The Drowned Woman

When Paulus watched the Templar’s party leave via the muddy road to the north instead of by river boat, that was his first real evidence that there was something wrong with the Oroza. Up until that point he’d convinced himself that it was in his own head, at least in part. After all, just because the plague had been called the drowning didn’t mean it actually had anything to do with the water, and plenty of people besides him were allergic to shellfish.

But if the devoted could feel the poison in that river enough that they knew to avoid it, then something was going to have to be done. His first thought was to go to Kelvun, but he was already downriver giving the river the tithe he gave every year for her annual bounty.

It was a strange sort of way to throw gold away as far as he was concerned, but the bards credited his generosity for the reason that the river had taken mercy on their land alone and shielded them when so many others had suffered previously. From the reports he had received now that the worst was over, and the graves were being dug, as much as a third of the city had expired in some parts of Dutton. It was a monstrous thing, but just because Fallravea had seen less than two hundred burned on the plague pyres didn’t mean that the river goddess had their best interests at heart, though.

So Paulus did his job, and over the following weeks he built a new spy network. Lord Garvin was always eager to pay for those, and fabricating a fake threat to hide the real target of the investigation was easy enough. Paulus hired spies and paid informants, and he started digging. It turned out that sending his men to join the mystery cults that were blossoming in the city was easy enough, but keeping them from finding religion in the process was much harder. He chose snub-nosed realists - men that cared more about coin than miracles who were past redemption by anyone's measure, but time and time again, within weeks of joining the cult, they would come back to him to proselytize instead of inform.

Cutting them into pieces before he was done with them didn’t reveal much either. They sang like men that had nothing to hide, and it baffled him to his core.

“How did a minor cult that worshiped a small god as the healer and the water bearer become this?” He demanded, slamming a paper down in front of as his latest interrogation.

Brynn hadn’t been a bad sort. He’d been reliable enough for following the Count’s mistress’s to make sure they weren’t being unfaithful to their Lord in between the times he was being unfaithful with them, but it had only taken three weeks as an acolyte at the temple of the water dragon to begin to show the worrying signs of disloyalty.

“I don’t know!” the man cried. “It’s just what’s on the wall! I swear it.”

The paper had the charcoal sketch that the man had drawn last week, when he’d been admitted to a temple underground the temple that was open to the public. It had been the first time that one of his men had gotten so far without showing signs of reverence to the very thing he was supposed to be spying on, but a week later, everything had changed.

“I know it's on the wall you fool,” Paulus said, holding the hot iron close enough to the other man’s face to watch him squirm, even though he couldn’t get far because he was bound to the same chair that everyone who was put to the question sat in. “You told me as much - what I want to know is how they… How you could worship this. It’s not a goddess, it’s a monster!”

“Monster? She is the goddess - the river dragon. She protects us all from—” Paulus grew tired of the other man’s babbling and prodded him in the chest with his brand just enough to get him to shut up. “Ahh, please… no more, I beg of you.”

“This is not a goddess, or a dragon,” Paulus shot back, holding up the picture again. “It’s an abomination.”

Though the sloppy lines and poor drawing ability of his spy hid many of the details, he had no idea whether that made the creature depicted more or less hideous. The description that Brynn had offered him at the time had been hideous enough to give him a sleepless night, but it was even more frightening that the man saw beauty where he’d seen only the unnatural before.

“You told me that they worship a corpse,” he said, jabbing his finger at the part that was supposed to be the decaying body of a woman in the center, “A corpse that is being devoured by a monster that lurks beneath the river. ”

“The drowned woman is not a corpse,” Brynn said, flinching as he eyed the poker. “Not completely anyway. She’s not dying… she’s coming back to life as the water’s regenerate her and conquer death. She—”

“And what about the monster then?” Paulus asked. He was tired of going over the same ground over and over, but it was getting late, and he was out of questions. Soon enough he would end this conversation by granting a merciful death to his former agent, and then after he dumped the boy he would get well and truly drunk in an attempt to blot out the dreams that always seemed to follow the discussions like this.

“That’s not a monster anymore than she is a corpse. They are one and the same. She is the goddess but also the river dragon, and she has nothing to fear for death can never truly claim her as long as the water flows.” After that Paulus stopped paying attention to what Brynn was saying, and walked around behind the man, putting the red-hot poker back in the fire before he mercifully snapped the man’s neck mid-sentence.

That made four good agents that had been swallowed up by this dark devotion in just the last month and probably another dozen before that. The worst part was that he couldn’t understand how this strange goddess could swallow up a man’s soul as easily as the river was going to swallow up this body later. It managed to make almost instant believers of hard men, which was a miracle that was more generally reserved by fat sacks of silver.

Paulus shook his head, baffled as he tried to make notes while the interrogation was still fresh in his mind. Why was there one painting of the goddess for public consumption, and another altogether more gruesome one in private? Why did they seem to be digging mysterious tunnels underneath Fallravea, and what were they for?

The more he learned, the more questions he had, but he still didn’t have quite enough to go to Kelvun and ask the guards to storm the temple. Without real evidence of treachery the lecherous young fool was as likely to execute him as to act on the information.

Paulus knocked loudly on the door three times. That was the signal for his henchmen to come in here and start wedging Brynn into a barrel for easy transport down to the south dock. Once they were there they’d tip in into the water, and it would become the problem of someone downriver. As they wrestled the barrel downstairs and into the back of the wagon, he wondered if acts like this had caused the problem. The river had never struck him as tainted before the goblins had tried to burn down the city and devour everyone in it. Maybe it was the sheet amount of dead that had been dumped into it over the years that finally turned it from the clear water he’d taken for granted his whole life into something darker.

It was an interesting thought, but it wasn’t going to change anything, just like he wasn’t going to change anything unless he figured out a way to delve deeper into the mystery. He kicked himself for not trying to reach out to that Templar surreptitiously before he’d left the city. Kelvun might have skinned him for such initiative when he found out though, and he would find out because the servants of Siddirm were anything but subtle.

If they decided that there was true evil afoot, inquisitors would surely follow, and righteous though he might think he was Paulus was under no illusions that he would fail to measure up to their standards.

No, the better plan was to keep siphoning extra funds from Lord Garvin while he gathered string, he decided, taking the opportunity on the short ride down the waterfront to scheme. That way, once he was safely outside the reach of all parties he could send an anonymous message to the holy city and watch the whole thing burn down from a safe distance. That might be another year, or perhaps two, and he would fake his own death and disappear somewhere quiet in the mountains, far from any rivers and scheming nobles.

Paulus didn’t even bother to dismount from the wagon which was parked halfway down the pier, before it narrowed enough that horses weren’t. He never did on nights like these. His hands were already dirty enough, and he saw no need to help the burly men that he paid for exactly this sort of thing do their job.

If he trusted them a little more than he wouldn’t even be here to watch them, but he knew all too well what happened when a body that was supposed to be gone forever reemerged somewhere it wasn’t supposed to, and he would make sure that didn’t happen on his watch.

“Come on then,” he called out after them as they rolled the barrel down the pier. “We don’t have all night.”

There were a few trading barges moored further down but any guards they might have new better than to see anything strangers might be up to even on a clear night. With the fog spreading across the river as it often did at this late hour they wouldn’t be able to see more than silhouettes taking cargo back to their boat in the same way that he could only dimly make out the lights of the city behind him. Regardless, he watched the dim shadows of his men push the barrel into the water with a splash he could hear from here before they started turning around and making their way back.

But no sooner did he look away then the quiet night was suddenly shattered by a sudden, terrible crunch that sounded like shattering timbers. He looked around, but there was no obvious source. All he could say with any certainty was that it had come from further down the pier.

Paulus hopped off the wagon and stood there, torn between going to investigate and going back to shore. It was only when he looked to his men to see if they were running back or taking their time that he realized they had vanished.

Part of him wanted to stare in disbelief, but the rest of him wanted to run. He settled for backing away very slowly while he studied the night for any clue as to what might have happened. He was sure that either one of them might have been stupid enough to blunder off the pier into the water, but both of them at once? That seemed unlikely.

“Sten? Walten?” he called out hesitantly. “Quit your bumbling and get back here right n…”

The words died in his throat and the fog cleared enough that he could see something huge looming out of the water. From this distance it was impossible to say, but it looked almost like the silhouette of a lake serpent or a —

Paulus started to run, as fast as he could towards the shore, and no sooner had he sprung to life than the monster behind him thundered to life and started to chase him, smashing the docks to flinders as it approached.

In the dark he tried to focus on the uneven planks in front of him, but his mind was haunted by what he’d seen. Even though it was just like Brynn’s picture, he still couldn’t believe it. The monster rising up out of the river behind him. The thing smashing boats and wrecking the water front wasn’t just a river dragon. It was The River dragon, and embedded in its chest, locked behind ribs of what looked to be rusting steel was the drowned woman, caged inside its terrible corpse.

It wasn’t a metaphor. It was the reality of the situation. The way it was gaining on him though, he doubted he’d ever get a chance to share that terrible truth with anyone…

Ch. 43 - Bait

Tsson’vek lay there in there on the rocky overhang above the creature’s nest for almost two days without moving a muscle. Covered in the dried mud he was invisible to the eyes and the nose of even a cautious hunter, but the drake that had become his obsession for the last few months was hardly that. It was a dumb beast, but an impossibly strong one. It would disappear for days at a time only to return with an entire elk or goat in one of its claws, and every attempt to hunt it until now using the tried and tested pack hunting tactics of the tribe had ended in the deaths of several of his fellow lizard men.

This time he would not fail, though. Even if the thing slew him, he would still win. He had already won, he thought. He had helped to bring down the wyvern, and he had survived the manticore even though he’d been poisoned by both of them in turn. Neither had forced him to linger as long at death’s door as the ogre’s blow had of course, but they had gotten him what he truly desired: a mate. So, even if the drake slew him his hatchlings would be raised in the shadow of a father worth remembering.

The ogre’s blow had shattered his bones, and it was only thanks to the darkness that now flowed through him that he’d survived at all. All of them hadn’t healed right, including his skull, which gave him the crooked gaze that many in his tribe found unsettling. He didn’t care though. They had no idea how poisoned his blood had become after surviving not one, but two fatal poisonings. The manticore’s stinger had made him vomit blood, and the wyvern’s acid had made his blood burn in his veins for a day and a night, but he was stronger for it.

He was stronger for all of it. The tribe had better hunters, and wiser leaders, but there was no one stronger than him anymore, and that was why he alone would slay the drake where three separate hunting packs had failed. Only he had the strength to do what needed to be done.

That victory would of course, only come with the perfect amount of surprise, so Tsson’vek lay there and waited for the thing to feat and sleep before he sprang his trap. When night fall, and the thing had been asleep for over an hour, he slowly rose to his feet, fearful of the cracking mud that broke as he moved, and the way the but of his spear scrapped against the stone of the rock he’d wanted upon.

The moon was only a sliver and his prey was asleep just beneath him. No one in his tribe would say this was an honorable hunt, but Tsson’vek did not care. He would trade the secret shame for the benefit that the kill would bring to the tribe. With this ebon drake finally dead, the whole valley would at last be theirs and the tribe would finally grow. The glory he would get would only be a side effect to salve his wounded honor. There was simply no other way.

He examined the razor tipped spear of obsidian in the starlight. It was a point that he’d carved just for this moment. It was too fragile to penetrate the leathery scales of his quarry, but it would be perfect for a single vicious strike through the eye and into the brain. The hunter looked down at the sleeping form of the drake, and watched as its chest rose and fell while it slept secure in the idea that there was no threat that could harm it.

Tsson’vek smiled a toothy smile at the idea that he was about to take that comfort away from it forever as he leapt soundlessly down towards the giant lizard. The fall was less than twenty feet, but that was plenty of time to build speed as he fell silently towards the sleeping creature.

It wasn’t asleep though. No sooner had he made the jump than it stirred. In that instant the hunter had all the time in the world to try to puzzle out whether he had done something to wake it, or if it had been the one laying a trap for him instead. He would never know, because even as he fell down, the head rose upward on its sinuous neck to meet him while he was helpless in midair.

Tyson’vek lashed out twice with the spear in the blink of an eye, but both of them missed the eye, and the second blow shattered the spearhead on the thick bone of the creature’s brow as it snapped at him. In a moment of heart stopping panic he was able to push against the jaws of the creature with his feet and kick free of the bite that would have cut him in half.

Using the momentum he whirled around and attempted to smash the creature’s near eye with the reach of his tail. Such a blow likely wouldn’t be enough to take its eye from it, but it would be enough to give it a blindside long enough for him to use that advantage to escape.

The blow never landed though. A drake lashed out with a second quick snap before Tsson’vek reached the ground, and it’s teeth firmly embedded in his tail, removing most of it in the blink of an eye. It was a painful shock, but the pain ended almost immediately, and was replaced instead by the shame that it had happened as well as the thrill of battle. He was wounded, and it would take many months for his tale to regrow. He was not dead though, and he would not die tonight. The wound where his tail used to be would stop bleeding on his own.

All he had to do was escape.

The hunter ran for his life, though not as fast as he would have if he’d still been able to use his tail for balance, but even so the danger didn’t come now. The danger would arrive in perhaps half a minute. Right now the drake was taking to the sky because it was as slow as it was powerful on land, but in the air it was a graceful predator, and as soon as it had some speed, he was done for.

Tsson’vek looked longingly to the surface of the lake. That would be the perfect place to hide and wait out the ebon drake’s wrath, but the ground between here and there was entirely open, and it was much too far away. That might be where the predator was expecting him to go, but as he scrambled down the slop he veered towards a little crag between boulders that he had scouted while the giant lizard was off hunting. He hadn’t planned for his hunt to go quite so poorly, but at his he had been on more than enough failed hunts, and he knew well enough to plan for every situation.

The gap was just large enough for him to squeeze into, and the level of claustrophobia was terrifying, but figuring out how to get back out was a problem for later. The only problem he had right now was staying alive until then.

Seconds after he had finished burying himself alive in the narrow crawlspace the drake landed, shrieking in rage as it found its prey out of reach beneath the stone. It claws struck the stone as it attempted to get to him, but as strong as it was, even it’s teeth were no mach for the granite that surrounded him. The thing raged at him for almost half an hour before it stopped, and Tsson’vek spent every minute of that time worried that while it might not reach him it might succeed in shifting the stone enough to crush him, or worse, bury him alive.

The hunt ended as it started, only this time the drake waited outside the den of the creature that defied it rather than the hunter waiting above the nest of the drake. For a day and a night they waited like that, and finally, when Tsson’vek could take it no more he slithered out, half expecting to  be eaten. That wasn’t what happened at all though.

Instead, he found the cooling corpse of the drake, coiled just outside the crevice. The creature was stone dead, and though he didn’t quite understand how, there was only one possibility that came to mind.

. . .

That it would have to wait until the following sunset to dispatch its ferryman along with the juggernaut to drag the corpse of the drake to the water’s edge and load it didn’t bother the Lich. It had waited long enough for someone to finally end this creature, and that it had been done so cleanly and with so little damage by the poison in the lizard man’s tail was cause for celebration. With no physical damage to the beast, its flesh crafters were free to do whatever they pleased.

That was the whole reason that it had saved that hunter’s life over and over again: to let the poison in his system build up to a truly toxic level that even a dragon might not be able to tolerate. Not that there were any dragons in the Wodenspine Mountains, sadly. He would be perfect bait for the drake or even a giant if one of them ever came down from the peaks.

The Lich would have been more than happy for the creature to devour his hunter whole. It had wanted it to, to ensure that the drake received a high enough dose of poisoned meat, and it still puzzled the Lich the hunter managed to survive. It was no matter, though. The tribe had another animal for their totem, and it had another corpse to fabricate a new nightmare from.

The real shame he here was that he hadn’t managed to capture, or even locate an air spirit to power such an abomination. They were even more elusive than river spirits because their domain spanned the whole of the world. It would have to find one to bait them in time, but it still wasn’t exactly sure what would attract them. The Lich made a mental note to locate and kill mages that might better understand the nature of the storm and the wind. Once, long ago, Albrecht had been a master of such things, but those parts of his mind had long sense rotted away as the Lich focused on other more important things like necromancy.

For now, it didn’t matter, because once it added the wings of the wyvern and choice bits of the manticore to the drake it would create a hunter of its own, and then send it out in search of prey of its own. The whole world still belonged to the Lich, it was just nibbling at it slowly, devouring the choicest bits instead of trying to gorge itself on things that didn’t matter.

It was still annoyed that it had to show off its Leviathan so publicly just to get rid of the nuisance that was trying to infiltrate the cult of the drowned woman. In the short term it was just an exercise in understanding how easy it was to taint the human spirit, but on a longer time horizon, the cult itself was a valuable form of camouflage and control.

It had succeeded and taking over a minor religion and subverting it to its own ends. That certainly bode well for the future, it thought as it sat there dreaming of its inevitable accent to godhood. There were few enough forces in the region that could stop it, and none of them even suspected that it continued to exist.