Tenebroum Ch. 48-49 (Patreon)

Ch. 48 - The Betrayed

Kelvun didn’t stop for anyone or anything as he ran up the stairs in the dark toward his rooms without even bothering to find a real sword. Along the way, he briefly considered running to the nursery to fetch his infant son, but decided against it because of how far away it was. He didn’t need a weapon or a child. What he needed was a safe place to hide until morning’s light would burn away the evil that had somehow turned up in his own home.

He idly wondered if his wife was safe, and tried to remember where she’d been before the lights went out, but he couldn’t recall for the life of him. Remembering anything was impossible with blood-curdling screams raising coming from the grand hall. There were closer ones too, but with the discordant symphony that the bard was still playing, it was impossible for him to figure out exactly how close or far any of that was from him.

It didn’t matter though, nothing did. He could find a new wife once this was over, and he was sure that he’d grow to love little Leo the second almost as much as he loved Leo the first. He just had to keep running; he would either stay ahead of it, and get to his chapel, or he wouldn’t. He simply had to trust that the gods would protect a righteous man like him.

They did too, and as he closed and barred the door shut behind him, he was forced to admit to himself that he’d know they would the whole time.

“If there’s a silver lining in this, it's that everyone who heard the message of that awful phantasm won’t live long enough to repeat it,” he assured himself as he lit a few of the candles in the room to try to dispel the darkness while he tried to think of what possible story he could spread in the wake of this event to divert the blame.

A peasant uprising might work, he supposed, but it would make him look weak as a leader. A goblin attack would be very appropriate for the goblin’s bane, but he hadn’t seen any reports of goblins within leagues of the city in years, so no one would believe it. Perhaps he could declare it to be an assassination by Dutton agents that was only partially successful, he thought to himself, brightening slightly as he paced back and forth in the tiny chamber that wasn’t even eight feet across.

“I’m sure I still have those ridiculous papers from Gelwin about those raids that were supposed to happen.” he mused. “If I were to—”

Kelvun’s words were cut off at the sound of something pounding on the door. He raised his flimsy weapon towards the sound as he quietly backed away from it, but whatever was out there didn’t sound like it was strong enough to get through.

“Kelvun you unbelievable coward, open the door!” a woman that sounded an awful lot like his wife shouted.

Kelvun only stood there, quietly, trying to decide if this was a trick. If it was then the door certainly needed to stay closed, but what should he do if it wasn’t? Should he take the chance?

“Kelvun” she shrieked again. “I know you’re in there and I know you’ve got a secret door in there for when you go see your whores, now let me in before those things find me, or I swear to all the gods I’ll never stop haunting you.”

For a moment Kelvun thought about leaving the door closed even though the pettiness in the face of death was more proof than he ever would have needed that it was her. If she died she would definitely haunt him until the end of his days, he admitted grudgingly as he lifted the bar on the door. That wasn’t the reason he was letting her in though. He was saving her because it would make him look more sympathetic.

“Darling, I’m so glad you’re safe, I…” the lie died on his lips as he opened the door enough for the light to spill out on the malformed shape outside the door. He only saw it for an instant before he decided to slam the door shut again, but that glimpse would be enough to haunt his nightmares for the rest of his days.

Only pieces of his wife were waiting there to greet him with open arms. Even in the darkness it was clear she’d met a violent end, and that whatever had done this to her had gone to great lengths to make sure that her face had been completely untouched. But the strange shadow that lurked behind her and talked through her mouth had a body that defied description entirely. It was a mass of tentacles and disjointed limbs more than a man or a monster.

The door swung shut, the tentacles came forward and immediately started to pull it open, pitting him in a terrible tug of war that Kelvun was slowly but surely losing.

“Kelvun - my darling husband, why didn’t you save me?” the thing that was using his wife’s corpse as a hand puppet called out to him. “Where were you when we needed you? Where was the hero that the bards sing about while your guests were being devoured by zombies?”

He gritted his teeth in the face of the horror, but the taunts sapped his strength, and slowly, but surely the sinuous limbs found their way through the gap, and finally, before they could grab him he let go of the door, leaping backwards and picking up his flimsy sword.

“You can’t touch me here vile demon!” he yelled in defiance. “Return to the pit that spawned you or face my righteous wrath!” Defiance was the only emotion he had left that could overwhelm the terror and sadness that flooded his body. It was one thing to let someone die, but it was something else entirely to view the result like this.

“Darling,” the head of his wife whispered, as the thing that wore her skin took a step forward. “Consecrated ground doesn’t stay quite so holy if you use it to bang the maids. Everyone knows that you weren’t praying all those hours you were locked away in there…”

The abomination slowly ignited with flickering white bursts of holy fire here and there, as it advanced into the room. It didn’t seem too disturbed by this though, and resulted only in giving him a better view of the inhuman puppet master as it moved toward him.

Kelvun considered himself a brave man. He’d ridden into battle on countless occasions, and was beloved by the people for his deeds, but this was too much, even for him. As much as he might not have loved his wife, seeing her like this broke fragile parts of his mind, and with one slash at the air to try to keep this thing back, he turned and ran for the fall wall. With his freehand he fumbled with the candelabra that was the switch for the secret door, and pulled it. If he could just escape until morning then he could…

The passage that opened up behind the small altar was dark, and it should have been empty, but as Kelvun charged in he ran into something soft and cold almost immediately. He raised his sword to strike without knowing quite what was blocking his way, but the grip of slender fingers on his wrist stayed his hand for a moment as whoever it was pushed him back into the room that he was so desperate to leave.

“No!” he yelled out, somehow powerless before the shadowy creature’s gentle grip, “I have to… We have to run, before it—”

“Shhhh, calm down Kevvie…” a familiar voice soothed.

“That’s right - relax. Everything is going to be just fine…” a second voice agreed.

For a moment Kelvun experience a wave of relief as he realized that Beatrice and Emalin were safe after all. He’d feared the worst when they’d gone missing weeks ago amidst the heat and the mobs, but now, when he needed them most, they’d come to save him. Then he realized that was impossible. Not only would they have no way to be here right now, but it would have been impossible for these two women to work together in anything.

This had to be some trick of evil he decided as he brought his sword down as hard as he could against the creature that bared his path. “Kevvie - why would you hurt us, after all we’ve been through?” Beatrice’s voice warbled in a cruel mockery of her sonorous tones.

The first blow bent the bejeweled ornamental blade, but that didn’t stop him. The fear and the rage boiling up inside him demanded an answer, and this was the only weapon he had. It took two more strikes to snap it off at the hilt entirely.

“It looks like my little lord’s sword gave out again,” Emalin tittered.

“Doesn’t it always though?” The thing wearing his wife’s skin answered from behind.

The monster that was holding him laughed at that in both of her voices as it finally stepped into the light. After what the evil had done to his wife, Kelvun had steeled himself for the worse, but the result was more terrible than he could have possibly imagined. Something had killed these women and stitched together pieces of their corpses in a way that was as asymmetric as possible, leaving him with a two-headed five-armed shambling horror. The fifth arm hinted that more than two bodies made up this monstrosity, but Kelvun tried very hard not to think about how his third mistress Annise might fit into that answer.

“Wha-waht do you want with me?” he demanded of the horror as it started to smoke in place, and the remains of the holy incantations made it smolder slightly.

“I just want to be with you Kevvie,” Beatrice answered, “Forever and ever and ever…”

“That’s right - the darkness promised us that after it was done with you, we could spend all eternity together!” Emalin agreed.

“No!” Kelvun screamed. He was trapped, but he’d be damned if he’d let them take him alive. He still had the useless hilt of his sword in his hand, but the cheap metal had fractured at an angle, leaving a few inches of steel on the hilt. He swallowed as he jabbed it towards his neck. He wasn’t sure if it would be enough to kill him quickly, but he hoped it would. It would be better to drown in his own blood than to endure any more of this horror show.

The blow never landed though. Inches before the steel would have buried itself in his right jugular, one of the tentacles from his wife’s puppeteer wrapped around his wrist and stopped him. “Now, now darling,” she cooed. “If you died now you couldn’t spend an eternity. You’ve loved making all of us scream for so long. Now it’s time to return the favor.”

Kelvun didn’t have a chance to finish wrapping his mind around that awful idea before he was dragged into the darkness by the two monstrosities. He was halfway down his winding private passage before he realized the sound he was hearing were his own screams, and they only stopped when he saw that they now intersected a new rough-hewn tunnel that someone had built to intersect it.

That shocked him. How had someone dug a tunnel underneath his palace without his notice? How long had this plot against him been brewing. Suddenly the memory of the moment he’d short-changed the swamp forced itself into his mind unbidden. That was when he was certain he was damned.

Ch.49 - An Inexplicable Aftermath

When the morning dawned and the only evidence of last night’s vicious storm were the puddles in the streets, Baronet Geldin was overjoyed. Well, he would have been, had someone from the guard not seen fit to send a messenger to wake him up at the crack of dawn. That was an entirely unacceptable turn of events, especially considering everything he’d already been through in the last few weeks.

With the coming of the autumn rains, the danger of riots and fires and finally stopped! This should have been the one night he’d been able to sleep in with his wife, but no, instead a mailed fist had woken him up to tell him he was needed. These riots were already well past anything he should have had to deal with already as Fallravea’s Captain of the Guard. He’d bought this post with a few well-placed bribes and pledges of eternal loyalty to his dear cousin because of the respectability that came with it. Beating rioters bloody and getting up in the dark to deal with things personally was never supposed to be part of that deal. He had a whole web of underlings for exactly this reason.

At least he was supposed to, but as he made his way from the local watch station to the city constabulary, the mystery only deepened. No one knew, it seemed what he’d been woken up for. All anyone knew was that he was urgently needed by the next person in the chain of command, so one at a time he was handed off to the next highest ranking officer on the list in a way that would have been comedic if it wasn’t so frustrating.

“If you can’t tell me where we’re going I’ve got half a mind to go back to bed until you find someone who can,” lord Geldin grumbled. Walking beside the lad that had been sent to fetch him to the palace for reasons no one would explain.

“Please sir - the night captain is at the palace gate. I’m sure that he knows just what’s going on,” the young errand boy pleaded, knowing he’d be the one punished if Lord Geldin failed to appear.

“At the gate? Why in the devil would Bruden be waiting in the damp when he could just as easily wait for me in the guard post, or the entry hall?” the Baronet wondered, mostly to himself though his escort answered anyway.

“I’m sure I can’t say sir,” the guard answered. “Everyone is standing outside the gate. That’s all I know. No one in or out until you get there.”

That at least mollified Lord Geldin. He’d much rather be in bed sleeping with his wife, but if he had to be out and about at this ungodly hour then the least he could expect was for everyone to treat him like the important person that he was.

Minutes later they arrived at the wrought iron gate, and there was an obvious pall, over everyone there but not clue as to why. “Why in the name of all that’s holy did you get me up this early Bruden?” he demanded. He’d learned early on in life that when you had authority you should throw your weight around as early as possible, so there was no confusion who was in charge.

“Sir,” the way that the night captain came instantly worried the viscount. Unlike him, Burden had been in the guard for almost two decades. He was a professional, and he was very obviously spooked. “It all started a few hours ago when there was a message for Lord Reigen at the main gate.”

“So - did you have the message delivered to him?” The Baronet asked, trying to be patient.

“We tried to my lo- sir, but he was at the Count’s palace, you see,” the man answered. Yes, he was definitely spooked, and trying to avoid something, though for the life of him the Baronet couldn’t imagine what.

He looked past the gate to the palace grounds and garden, and the only thing he saw amiss was the wreckage of a drowned party between the hedge maze and the fountain. That made him smile. He’d been to precious few of the parties that Count Garvin had thrown since everything had started to spin out of control and the nobles - the ones that really mattered, had sought to put some distance between themselves and the commoners. He liked to think they’d left him out because he was too busy with his official duties, but he knew the truth: he was the third son of a lesser family and this was as far as he was ever likely to rise.

“So - they had a little rain on their parade - they won’t bite the head off your messenger,” the guard captain answered, still smiling that their fun had been ruined. “I still don’t see how you need me for any of this.”

Captain Bruden didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he gestured to two of his men that were standing by with torches, and started walking toward the palace, leaving him to catch up. Something about their grim silence made him stay quiet, and eventually it proved to be enough to kill even the smile that had been inspired by the drooping flower arrangements and soaked platters of food that had been left out all night.

The realization that all of that was something the servants should have addressed by now was his first clue that something might actually be terribly wrong, and it came to him moments before he saw the bloodstains on the front door. Lord Geldin reached for his sword immediately at the sight, only to realize that he hadn’t belted it on in his hurry to get dressed. Reluctantly he pulled a dagger from another sheath and held it like a protective talisman.

“What happened?” He asked, finally working up the nerve to speak.

“We don’t know.” Captain Bruden answered. “The messenger took one look inside and ran back out into the pouring rain. We haven’t been able to get much out of him about who or what he saw.”

The way the men stopped it quickly became apparent to Lord Geldin that they expected him to do the honors and open the door, or at least to chicken out and order someone else to do it. He was determined not to do that though, in case this was a prank, and pushed the door open without the slightest hesitation to show his decisiveness.

That decision almost immediately backfired as he windmilled on the slick travertine tiles of the entryway and only avoid falling onto his ass in a pool of blood thanks to his right hand’s death grip on the front door.

Lord Geldin didn’t have time to get over that first shock before the second large shock hit him like an ocean wave. Dawn’s light was only just starting to shine through the windows on the east side of the building, and many of those still had their drapes drawn, but what light crept into the room was enough to see that the place was a charnel house.

In recent years Count Garvin had lavished money on his own vanity, and the grand entryway to his palace had been refurbished twice. The first effort had see the stairs replaced with something broad and sweeping to match the new stone work, and the second had covered half of everything in a layer of gold and gilded scrollwork.

This third renovation had covered the other two in a layer of blood. That was the first thing that struck the Viscount as he struggled to put on a brave face in front of his lessers. Everything was covered or spattered in thin layers of partially congealed blood. It was only after that shock started to fade that he realized there were no bodies to go with it.

How could one end up with so much blood and so many bodies? He had no idea, but he knew what needed to happen next, before the panic that was slowly making its way up his spine forced him to flee. Ever so carefully, so he wouldn’t slip and fall, he walked to the east windows and began opening the curtains one at a time. Every extra bit of light made the horror show that much worse, but it was necessary. That’s what he told himself at least.

“Light banishes the darkness,” he said, mostly to himself. “All the priests say it, and light is the only thing that could possibly protect us from whatever did this.”

Once he started the other men began to help him, flooding the room with dim morning light that was still brighter than any torch. It was only when he had opened up every last window that could be opened that he was forced to come face to face with the facts here. No one had survived whatever happened here. They couldn’t have.

Here and there were scraps of fancy dresses and costumes of the rich that had been here last night, but there were also serving trays and parts of uniforms that spoke to the servants that would have been attending to their needs. Even though Lord Geldin wasn’t an imaginative man, he could see how this bloodbath would have played out. The only thing that was missing, was who did it.

“Who could have done such a terrible thing?” He asked the other men at a complete loss. Captain Bruden shook his head in silence unable to speak, and one of the soldiers that accompanied them in tried to suggest goblins, but they’d all fought goblins in recent enough memory to know the signs. The room would be stacked with bodies, and all of them would bear the marks of the green skins hunger.

No, it didn’t make sense, but then he doubted anything ever would.

“We need to find evidence of something,” Lord Geldin said firmly, using his dignity and his title to prop up his failing bravery. “I won’t send letters to the king and the holy city with nothing more than blood to go on.”

He only realized after he said it that he would probably have to do exactly that. The Geldin’s were pretty far down the lists of accession for Greshin county, but then, anyone who was anyone had been here last night. There were likely still some of the elder Gerwins at their estate in the country, and of course Baron Laxly was in his manor outside the city, but it would take time to call them back, and in an emergency like this everyone would be looking to the captain of the guard for answers, so he’d better damn well have some.

They spent the next hour searching the lower floors, but in the end the only thing there was to find was a terrible hole dug into the basement. It was where all the bodies had been dragged to. That much was obvious, but how it had gotten there, or how long it had been there, no one would even guess. It had been dug right up through the foundations of the castle - right through solid stone, and though one of the soldiers dropped a torch into it to verify there was a ramp they could walk on, no one dared descend the stairs for a closer look.

In the end they moved as much furniture as they could in front of the basement door to keep whatever it was from getting out again, but as they did that Lord Geldin heard a distant whining. He silenced the men that were with him, and slowly they followed it up the stairs to the west wing.

There at least the blood thinned out significantly, eventually becoming nonexistent. From a distance he’d had no idea what the strange, painful sound had been, but once he got closer it became obvious. When they opened the final door to the small nursery they found nothing more or less than a squalling infant. Lord Garvin’s son Leo was the only survivor of everything that had happened here. It was a sort of miracle to find a baby untouched amidst this terrible disaster, but there was nothing to tell them why they would let a baby live when everyone else had died so gruesomely.