Tenebroum Ch. 50-53 (Patreon)

Alright. Weekly posts now. I've tried hard to step up my editing game. I hope you notice a difference!

Ch. 50 - Comeuppance

Of all the lords dragged screaming and bleeding into the darkness, only one truly mattered to the Lich. Oh, it tried to take as many of the preening peacocks alive as possible, of course, but only so his favorite Count could have an audience for all the indignities to follow. Only Kelvun truly mattered, though. Only he got an ounce of gentleness as the region’s nobility was herded into the dark for what came next.

He was kept there, in the undertemple of Oroza the undying, and forced to choose who would be butchered next in the voices of his lovers until he lost the ability to speak. After that, the sinuous, longarmed, multiheaded Puppeteer merely told everyone why they were being forced to suffer on his behalf before they were unceremoniously transformed from people into parts. Sometimes these executions were surgical, and sometimes they were more brutal, but only to keep the horror fresh. Kelvun’s mind was shattered by the Lich’s Puppeteer after less than a day, though, which had been entirely expected.

The Puppeteer was an interesting creation that the Lich had made to better understand humanity now that it had drifted so far from those now foreign shores. It wasn’t enough to kill its victims after all. It wanted them to suffer, and for that, it needed something in its service that understood emotions and deceit almost as well as the mages of its ever-growing library understood magic.

The Puppeteer started as the braided tongues of several liars. Then slowly but surely, the Lich infused the parts of bards and swindlers along with a singularly disreputable mage that had disappeared on a lonely road between liaisons to create a work of singular deceit. The result was something that could say anything you would ever want to hear and everything you didn’t. It could find all of your weak points at a glance, and if it had a fresh corpse or two, it could even tell you your deepest, darkest secrets in the voices of those you loved the most in this world, as Kelvun had already discovered.

That entertainment only had to last long enough for the water levels in the Oroza to rise to the point that the Lich’s ferryman could once more travel down the muddy waterway to bring his prize forth. It didn’t care about the fate of the rest. They would be turned into undead pawns or used as parts to create something worse. None of them would go to waste as the Lich began to prepare for the inevitable reprisals that were bound to happen in Fallravea after everything it had done. The Lich didn’t care. Its plans were much too far along, and even its enemy’s actions would play into them now, whether they knew it or not.

All it wanted to do now was to spend the next few weeks torturing the lording that thought it could cheat him until no amount of magic could hold body and soul together. Only then would he put Kelvun’s soul in his trophy case until he had tanned the boy’s skin for a very special new project he’d planned for the young fool.

When the zombies dragged the broken remnant of the Count before the Lich, it was more disappointing than satisfying. He didn’t respond to the braziers of blue flame or the golden rictus of the magus that was its core. He just lay there whimpering as he looked sightlessly around the unfamiliar room.

“All those schemes of yours,” the Lich whispered through a freshly severed head. “All that planning and plotting, and where did it get you?”

Kelvun said nothing, so after a moment of silence, it continued. “You thought that you could ever defeat me? YOU?!” roared the Lich’s surrogate. It was inhuman and made Kelvun shudder as he curled himself into a ball while the voice echoed off the cold stone walls, and the room slowly fell into silence. “You were only the shepherd of my flock, and it was always bound for the slaughter. Had you done your job well, you might have merited a position in the darkness, but now you will serve only as an object lesson in what happens to traitors.”

The lips of the Lich’s speaker curled briefly into a horrible parody of a smile at the small joke that was entirely wasted on his audience. “Your life is forfeit, your wife is dead, your line is gone, and your lands will…”

The Lich’s voice trailed off as it heard the barest whisper from the broken man, and it paused to listen.

“Those are my lands,” Kelvun rasped, “They are the lands of my father’s father - and you will not touch them!”

The Lich thought it was odd to get worked up about only the final point, but the strange utterance caused it to do something new and entirely unexpected. For the first time in its entire existence, it laughed. It was an awful croaking sound that did not adequately reflect its disdain for the pitiful creature in front of it, but just the same, it boiled out of some dark place in the whirlpool of souls that swirled deep within in.

This only enraged Kelvun further, and he rose unsteadily to his feet, making the embalmed lizard men that served as the Lich’s personal guard twitch restlessly for the first time in years as they stood timelessly against the walls on both sides of the exchange. The Lich stilled them with a thought. There was nothing that this whelp could do to him, even if he had been armed. Despite his reputation as a hero, he’d never struck down a single enemy in anger, and he wouldn’t start now at the heart of the Lich’s dark power.

“You can’t be here!” Kelvun shouted raggedly, finally finding his voice. “I killed you! I killed you and drained your whole damn swamp! There’s nothing left of you now but farmers’ fields and bad dreams!”

“How little you know, worm, everything you’ve done - every falsehood and betrayal you attempted to foil me with has only been woven into my plan. There is nothing—” The Lich was stopped in its gloating as Kelvun tottered forward and lunged at the Lich, sending the head spiraling into the darkness.

The human then did the unthinkable and brought his fists down, seeking to break through the thin metal shell and damage the Lich itself. Such a feat was impossible for the weakling, of course, but its guards still trembled with rage at the other end of their leash. The Lich only barely kept them restrained as it grabbed Kelvun by his soul, holding him there with his flesh in contact with Albrecht’s ageless golden body.

“You will never forget this,” the Lich growled voicelessly directly into Kelvun’s mind. “After I show you what a terrible mistake you’ve made, you will never forget anything again. I deny you even that comfort. When I am done with you shall be forced to remember every trauma and every outrage that I commit to this world, and it will all start with your precious lands.”

Kelvun tried to talk, but the Lich wasn’t interested in the Lordling’s words. Instead, the dormant wraith inside the Lich came to life and yanked Kelvun’s soul out of his body as it soared through the bedrock ceiling of the throne room, through the labyrinth that lay above, and finally through the buildings of Blackwater that lay just above the Lich’s lair. After that, there was nothing above them but the night sky, but the wraith did not slow down. It soared ever higher and ever faster until it reached the very limits of its domain more than a mile above the fertile lands below.

“You’ve never even seen all the lands that you claim to own, insect, but I have,” the wraith whispered. “From the Fallravea to the Red Hills in the north to where the Oroza empties into the sea at Tagel, every inch of these lands has been explored, and most of them already belong to me forever.”

Kelvun’s spirit could only gaze in mute aww as it looked at the impossible scene of the world laid out before him like a map one would hang on the wall. That was when the blight began to spread, showing him not just the physical world but all the places that the Lich now controlled forever. It appeared as gray stains that were strongest in the area that had once been the swamp, the red hills, and all the lands near the Oroza River. There were spots in other places, of course. Fallravea was his, but there was also a spattering of gray blotches spread across the plains where the goblin army had once waged its campaign of fire and death. Almost half the county still wasn’t under its sway, though, and very little of the lands in Dutton or Lindvell belonged to it.

“The darkness spreads no matter what you do, you ignorant fool,” The wraith raged. “The water might be gone from the swamp, but with every farmer’s harvest on those lands, it becomes a part of every loaf of bread and every child who eats it.”

“That can’t be,” Kelvun’s spirit gasped, his eyes full of terror. “You couldn’t… the Templars. They would see - they would notice—”

“Let them,” the wraith growled, slowly drifting lower and lower now that its point had been made and the pitiful human finally understood. “I was always going to have to fight them, but it will be at a time and place of my choosing, and there is no place in this land that has been more prepared for my victory than the lands of Blackwater!”

As the wraith spoke, the tunnels carved beneath the town began to glow darkly so that the two of them could see them for the giant seal of binding and the slowly filling reservoir of dark power they were. They were a blight on the land, but until the Lich activated the spells that it and its library had spent years crafting, it was nothing but a shadow that even the gods would not be able to detect until it was far too late.

The wraith and the soul fell intertwined from the heavens, picking up speed as they went until they fell through the same earth they’d risen from, impacting their bodies like thunderbolts. The Lich was unperturbed by this. It had endured the same sensation thousands of times in the last decade as it entered and left the material world. Kelvun, though, had no such experience. As he entered his body again, he was knocked backward by the Lich, flying several feet before landing hard on the cold stone of its throne room.

“The lands are mine by right!” the overgrown boy sobbed as two of the lizardmen each grabbed him by a limb and began slowly dragging him to the den of the flesh crafters.

There his last few days on this world would be filled with unmitigated agony until the moment the Lich finally let him perish. Nothing was his by right any longer. Not his lands, his flesh, or even his soul. The Lich would see them all put to good use, of course, but it would also ensure he would not enjoy the experience.

Ch. 51 - Darkest Past

The gates of bronze were familiar to him, even battered and tarnished as they were. Krulm’venor had been here before, even though he did not remember when or why. He was sure of that much. The stonework in the tunnels that lead to the twenty-foot tall doors was wide and open, presenting multiple layers of defenses and lines of fire in an unmistakably dwarven way. However, the shapes that moved behind the walls - the shadows he could see flickering from gap to gap in the shadowy recesses of the firing slits were unmistakably goblin.

He was thankful that he couldn’t smell anything because, as befouled as the entrance was, the sight was almost enough to make him gag. Seeing the glory of the past desecrated like this was truly tragic, but the presence of goblins did worse things than sadden him. It made him itch. He could feel them crawling inside his bones now. That monster had locked the frayed souls of dozens of their kind in here with him, and they haunted him, muddying the edges of his precise dwarven soul with their filth and hunger. It was a disgusting process but one he could do nothing about. All he could do was take out his frustration on the still-living goblins he encountered.

That thought made the blue flames that licked his skeleton flare brighter. Boiling these creatures alive in their skin was the only thing that would make him feel better.

The interior of the ancient fortress wasn’t in any better shape than the exterior had been. Only the highest parts of the tapestries remained unshredded, and any ornamentation near the ground had been ravaged and ruined; the frescoes on the ceilings were largely intact besides the black stains that had accumulated from countless small fires in this room.

The rooms of the dwarven fortress were nests or battlefields, and sometimes they were both at once as the goblins constantly waged war with each other one room at a time. As Krulm’venor moved from room to room, the tiny creatures that infested the place ran before him, eager to flee his eerie blue light. That just gave him more time to study the place and wrack his mind for some clue as to why he would have walked these halls before, though.

It wasn’t until he reached the library, or at least what was left of it on the second floor, that he discovered that answer. The leather tomes and long ago been devoured, and the pages and scrolls were only ash now. The stone shelves carved into the exterior walls could never be erased by such crude creatures, and the mosaic of All-Father on the ceiling was equally out of reach. It was the beauty of that piece that brought him back. The ancient, white-bearded dwarf stood there in a finely appointed smithy wearing an apron of dragon leather and a look of judgment.

Such was the skill of the nameless artist, though, that if you looked past the obvious, you could see that the Allfather was made up of hundreds of tiny dwarves, each a seamless part of the greater whole that had been found worthy. That was the dwarven afterlife. Krulm’venor knew that because once, long ago, he’d been a part of that. He’d been… a jolt of pain assaulted him as fragments of discordant memories assaulted him.

In his mind, he could see ossuaries stacked with the bones of dwarves. The youngest who died in battle were honored in their own way, but their gleaming white skulls would never achieve unity with the divine. It was only the older skulls that had lived hundreds of years and tested their mettle against every adversity that were free to join him in the afterlife. All the other dwarves would have to take another trip to the fire to have their mettle tested once more because only the crystal skulls of the ancestors could genuinely connect with the divine.

If that was true, though, then why was Krulm’venor not still in the afterlife, helping the All-Father to forge creation forever more? A loose thread of a memory pulled at him - something about how in times of dire need, a dwarf would be selected and— He almost had it, but in the time it had taken him to remember these things, his fires had begun to dim, and it was in that near darkness that the goblins crept closer and closer.

He could feel them, or at least the goblins locked inside this cursed cage could, but he was so focused on trying to remember that he did nothing and so emboldened they crept closer and closer. It was only when the first one attacked him that those memories drifted away like smoke, leaving Krulm’venor with only the coals or wounded pride and raging resentment that was all that was left of his dwarven soul.

The sharp stone that the goblin struck his steel femur with could never hope to scratch this terrible body. However, the single clear note of the impact rang out, and like a single drop of water in a still pool, it clarified everything. Revelation could wait. Knowledge and memory could wait. Even revenge on the Lich that had done these terrible things to it and trapped it in this bag of rats could wait. What couldn’t wait was killing these disgusting, insignificant vermin.

“Do not touch me,” Krulm’venor rasped.

For a moment, the goblins that surrounded him flinched in unison, wavering at the sound, but when no action followed. They surged forward, emboldened. At that moment, the world burst into flames. They emerged from where Krulm’venor’s heart should have been, like a nova, and flooded the room with liquid fire.

For the first time in decades, this room was lit brightly enough for every detail to be seen, but the only thing anyone would ever see here was a massacre. The goblins closest to him could touch him with their weapons, but that was all. Even as they achieved that remarkable victory, the hands that held them burned to ash. Those goblins that were further away had a chance to scream as the heat of the fire made their rancid green skin steam before the flames reached out to crisp them to shades of brown and black.

The goblins that were furthest away tried to flee, but the magnitude of Krulm’venor’s fury kept rising, so that was impossible. He paced through the three-story structure, burning away every goblin, as well as every sign that they’d ever existed. The totems and graffiti they used to mark the ever-shifting line of their territory vaporized almost as easily as the warriors that fought over them, along with any remnants of the dwarves that had once lived here.

Only when all that had burned away did Krulm’venor start to feel clean again. He couldn’t erase the many stains on his soul that the swamp had put there, but the purity of fire could hide them with its all-consuming light for a time. He would gladly stay like this forever if he could have, as the heart of his own tormented sun. However, when he saw the bronze fixtures were starting to melt and the perfectly dressed blocks of dwarvish stone were cracking under the heat, he couldn’t keep going.

Being buried alive by the collapsing structure wasn’t his concern either. He was happy to die. He was getting to the point where he welcomed true death and the oblivion awaiting him, but he wouldn’t harm dwarves. Even as tarnished as this building was, an ambitious clan could one day reclaim it. Their job would be that much easier now that he had purged it of vermin and filth with fire, he thought, looking for some silver lining to all of this.

Now he could go back downstairs and examine the mosaic to his heart’s content until he remembered what he’d forgotten. The Lich wouldn’t even protest such an activity. It was precisely what that foul creature wanted him to do. The last thing he wanted to do was give that evil access to more information about his people, but in this matter, he couldn’t resist his own terrible compulsion to find out more about himself. For years now, all he’d been was a spark of the divine, and for who knows how long before that, he was reduced to little more than smoke in a filthy cave. He needed to understand why he would ever subject himself to such a fate. Part of that answer was why he’d been separated from the Allfather; he was sure of it.

When Krulm’venor reached the library once more, his spirit sank. In his mind, he’d been expecting to see a now cleansed room that had been turned from the midden heap it had become into the shrine to the only god that mattered it should have been.

Instead, he found he had cleansed the whole place entirely too well. The goblins were reduced to ash, and the trash had been vaporized as well, but he’d burned too hot for too long, and the artwork that had managed to survive the goblins for who knows how long had been blasted to ruin by the full force of his dark fires.

Krulm’venor could have wept for the feeling of loss he felt then, but there were no tears left to cry. Indeed, there was nothing left at all. Just an empty skeleton in an empty fortress surrounded by the new and the old dead. He turned to leave, and that was when he finally felt his master’s dark gaze upon him.

“That picture. The one you destroyed. What was it?” the Darkness in the back of his mind asked.

“That was the Allfather, lord of the dwarves, and I bitterly regret its loss. I wasn’t attempting to hide anything from you.” As he responded, Krulm’venor realized that perhaps it was for the best that it was gone. The Darkness couldn’t quite read his mind, but it could compel the truth from him and leave him suffering in agony until he told it everything that it wanted to know. Less evidence meant fewer questions to ask.

“The dwarves only have one god then, while the humans have multitudes. Why is that?” This time the Lich pressed harder like it suspected something, but Krulm’venor merely shrugged.

“Who knows why the humans do anything,” he rattled. “The dwarves have one god because there is only one way to do anything right. That’s as true for stone cutting and steel forging as it is for worship.”

There was a long, uneasy moment where it worried the Lich would press harder still, but as quickly as it appeared, the dark pressure on his mind eased. His master was gone, leaving him alone in the infinite dark to worry in private.

He desperately wanted to know more about his past than the growing pile of scraps he had, but the more he learned, the more the Lich would too. What terrible deeds could such an entity do with the knowledge that the dwarven god was made up of the souls of all the dwarven elders who ever lived?

Krulm’venor prayed silently that it would never find out as it exited the ash-filled fortress and continued his long silent walk into the deeps.

Ch. 52 - Dark Missives

When the messenger arrived in the holy city of Siddrimar, the seat of the light God Siddrim’s earthly power, with his ill news, he was forced to wait almost a day before the guards could be bothered to admit him. This was good and proper, of course, as he was not a member of the church and had not come at the request of any of the priests. He came bearing only the seal of temporal power and a minor one at that. The Count of Greshen was not a well-regarded name. Their river heresies were only tolerated thanks to the generous tithes they’d given to the church.

Few small gods were granted such benign neglect, and only when all evidence showed that they were an unmitigated good for the region’s people. Despite his unlimited power, neither Siddrim nor his servants needed to hunt down every stray spirit. After all, there were more than enough evils to banish in the world.

So, the tired, saddle-sore man was allowed to rest and wait in the perdition courtyard. This was the outermost enclosed area, just inside the main gate. It was a drab, undecorated affair crowded with penitents and petitioners. While he waited, his request to be seen by a member of the Templars was filtered slowly up the chain of command between meals and scheduled prayers. That he didn’t even know enough to call them by their proper name, The Order of Purgative Flame was no help to his case. Any of the rank-and-file members of the order would have accepted Templar just as readily, of course. They seemed somewhat attached to the name even if it was officially frowned on in favor of the formal title. However, they would never be the first to hear an unknown petition.

Such requests were only ever passed through the priesthood for proper deliberation. The more important they were, the more priests would have to be involved in ensuring that whatever was decided was the right decision for the church. In this matter, the request of a minor noble was deemed too unimportant for the Hierarch of Purgative Flame or even his aids. After all, what need would a country fief have for such a prestigious branch of the Siddrim’s palace? Their elite forces were busy stomping out the brush fires of heresy across the country, as they always were. Whether those came in the form of hedge witches or raucous bards, there were never enough of their cadres to go around. So, the request fell to the high priest of the Regency, who in turn was too busy and sent it on to the high priest of the Penitent. He was too ill to take guests that day, though, so it was sent to his underlings.

Ultimately, after more than a dozen quiet conversations and thoughtful reassignments to someone who might be better suited to the task, it was delivered to Verdinen, A priest-candidate acolyte. Unlike everyone that ranked higher than him in the pecking order, he was eager to please, though. He might not have had the sight or some of the gifts that his fellow priest-candidates had. Still, he was eager to work hard and advance, and he was confident that alone would take him places, even if his divine blessings and healings could use a little more work.

Brother Verdinen found the messenger sitting alone on a stone bench shortly before sunset in the outermost courtyard. He’d spent the last few minutes rehearsing a speech about all the reasons why the messenger had to go through proper channels and why it would likely be a week before a man in his place would be allowed to see the Underkirker to arrange a more personal audience. Of course, he secretly hoped that the lord of such a rich county would have sent his man with a little coin to spread around and expedite things. Brother Verdinen would have been happy to take his cut and help the man find an audience with an acolyte of the holy flame the day after tomorrow at the latest with that sort of incentive. After all, he was owed a few favors for all his good works.

But the man didn’t argue or haggle. He just looked up at the priest with haunted eyes as soon as Brother Verdinen started to make his apologies and said, “Read it, your holiness, I beseech you,” as he pressed a rather large sealed scroll into Verdinen’s hands.

Typically These requests were about bandits as often as cults. Still, something about the desperation that clung to the man in front of him affected him. Rather than delivering the rest of his speech, he checked the golden seal that featured a river and chain for integrity and then cracked open the wax.

The scroll was perfectly normal velum written in unremarkable ink with a slightly shaky hand. There was nothing evil or magical about it, but with every word he read, his mind recoiled in horror as the words and their evil meaning invaded his brain. Even though it rebelled, the priest-candidate acolyte forced himself to continue, and a picture slowly resolved in his mind. Gresham was a region being punished by the gods for their misdeeds with a severe drought and an unseasonable storm. Suddenly everyone of any importance had gone missing, and all that had been left behind was a house full of blood, a squalling child, and a hole in the basement.

Brother Verdinen didn’t know what could have done such a thing, and honestly, he didn’t want to. He wanted to administer last rites to rich old men and comfort comely women during their times of trouble. He wanted to advise princes of the realm as a prince of the church. He knew without doubt that there was evil in the world, but he hadn’t joined the church to deal with such things. Those details were best left to the Order of Purgative Flame, the Brotherhood of the Blazing Harrow, or even the Inquisitors, though he’d never mention that last one in public.

Suddenly, despite the almost mortal danger, he couldn’t help but imagine what sort of yawning evil must have welled up from the depths to drag so many sinners into the darkest hell. His mind conjured up something slimy, like a dragon or a serpent, and an involuntary shudder went through him. He was no seer, but he could only take what he’d experienced as a sign regarding the machinations of the dark god. Perhaps Harquines or Tallethin were at work here. He couldn’t say, but his superiors would know.

He closed the scroll as soon as he decided what had to be done next and brusquely ordered the messenger, “Come with me. I will find you a place to sleep while my superiors deliberate.”

That part was easy enough. The church kept bunks year-round for pilgrims, and the end of summer was hardly pilgrimage season. With so much work to prepare for the harvest, they had more than enough room. Seek an audience - that would be another matter entirely. Usually, Brother Verdinen would have gone to great lengths to avoid drawing that kind of attention to himself, but this was a chance where the spotlight could only benefit him. After all - it was he that had seen the genuine danger and he that had felt the taint radiating from the page. Surely if he could see that, then everyone else would too.

Ultimately, he decided the most expedient route was approaching the Priest Varquaress. The old man was undoubtedly amenable and much more sensitive than he and began to shake with the first signs of a fit almost as soon as he opened the scroll and closed it immediately after reading only a few lines. That was all the convincing he needed.

After that, a conclave was called for dawn, and it was scheduled for the room of eternal dawn. Its murals of light and life would do wonders to keep the evil they would be discussing at bay, though it would have to be scrubbed hard by the acolytes afterward just the same.

The message was locked away in a sanctified chest to prevent its taint from spreading. This turned out to be both a brilliant and terrible idea because, in the morning, when the priests and high priests had all assembled to examine the document and decide what needed to be done, all they found was ashes. Sometime during the night, the holy power of the city had proven too much for the implement of evil, and it had withered before the might of their god.

“That should be all the evidence that we need to dispatch a cadre to root out this filth,” Gantrin, a high priest who dealt more with tomes than people, argued. For him, anything relating to writing like this was a miracle from their god directly to him, and he would not budge in interpreting that.

“I remain unconvinced,” Armuth answered, making sure the trace of arrogance in his voice was obvious enough to be unmistakable. As the Hierarch reasserted his dominance in the conversation. “Tell us priest-candidate everything you can remember about this cursed missive, and then we shall make our decision.”

Brother Verdinen swallowed hard. He’d been dreading this moment since they’d found the heap of ashes in place of the scroll earlier. He’d wanted to be the center of attention, but only as the person with the wit to escalate this as soon as possible. Now, as the only one to read it, that role was inescapable, and he began to sweat as he stood and bowed before the assembled leaders of the wing of the church militant. He hadn’t planned to actually speak to his betters, so he’d made no attempt to memorize that damnable scroll, but here he was, suddenly expected to recite it from memory.

“Thank you, your glory,” he said, his mouth dry as he realized he had no idea whether the Hierarch wanted him to exaggerate or downplay the danger for the audience with the pointed way that the man was glaring. “I shall give you all every last detail, so you may make the proper judgment.”

Brother Verdinen began to speak, but not a word of it was what he remembered from the scroll. He couldn’t remember a single thing he’d read verbatim, so he just made it up. He started with a simple greeting that was respectful but not respectful enough. He described the eerie scene of a palace where decadent nobles had danced into the night, never to be seen again. He mentioned the blood, but since it didn’t seem to have the desired impact, he added a few ritually butchered servants to the description for color. If he was going to stand up here speaking in front of so many influential men, he would make sure his words left an impact.

When he was finally done describing the horrors unleashed in Fallravea, he took grim satisfaction in the number of men around the table who looked stricken. There was only a brief debate after that, and in the end, everyone agreed that a sworn cadre should be sent with all haste to root out this terrible blight. It was going as well as Brother Verdinen could have hoped until the Hierarch said, “of course, you’ll need to go with them too, priest-candidate.”

“M-me sir… I mean your glory. Why would the Tem… the warriors of The Purgative Flame require the assistance of a lowly acolyte?” Brother Verdinen asked. Normally he was loathe for anyone to reduce his meager rank, even in passing, but this time it seemed best to make himself as small and unimportant as possible.

“Why, of course - you were the first to recognize the danger, so it is only right that you are there to share in the glory,” the Hierarch smiled. “And with your fine words, I can think of no one better to document the brave deeds of our holy warriors.”

Brother Verdinen forced himself to smile and thank the man for his obtuse punishment. Deep inside, though, he felt like something had already died.

Ch. 53 - Squire Todd

Fear mixed with excitement the day that the priest-candidate stormed across Todd’s path to see Brother Faerbar. There could only be one reason for such a visit: to bring them orders that he was to ready his men for another mission. Even after being here for over a year, Todd was still on edge whenever one of the lower priests crossed his path. They were a fickle bunch in their red robes and much more likely to scream at him and his fellow acolytes for imagined sins than to praise hard work. Worse - those beratings usually ended in lengthy punishments. As Brother Faerbar’s squire, he was often singled out for those while he was told how he needed to ‘hold himself to a higher standard.’

By contrast, the priests and high priests barely noticed that he and his fellow acolytes existed. Anyone that had been elevated to the white no longer seemed to see the gray and brown robes of the acolytes, even though many of them had worn them for much longer than they’d worn the white or the red. Todd thought it was funny, but he didn’t really care beyond the extra chores. He had less than zero interest in ranks and titles. All he cared about was that Brother Faerbar had been good to him, and he was teaching him how to fight. One day he would no longer be a squire but a full-fledged warrior, and then he could go back to the broad plains of his birth and finally get his revenge on the goblin tribes that still lingered there even now.

That wasn’t what would happen today, though, based on the sense of urgency on display. The red-robed man barely glanced at him long enough to scowl before he hurried to speak with his master. A priest candidate would never hurry half so much for a lowly goblin. He was almost certainly here because some heretic or bandit needed to be dealt with like usual.

Being ignored suited Todd just fine. He’d just finished mending his master’s chain mail after their expedition north last week. Right now, he was rolling it back and forth across the small courtyard of the guardians, where most of the sparing practice took place to get the last of the rust off. The swamp they’d trudged through to track down their last fugitive had been tougher on everyone’s armor than the self-styled bandit king of the Greenwood had ever been. Besides a single ambush where Todd had taken his first arrow, they’d barely put up a fight.

Todd paused in his exertions to scratch the place the wound had been on his arm. There was barely a mark now, thanks to the paladin’s healing magic, but sometimes it still tingled. Pausing for a quick break to stretch was just a cover, though. He’d chosen his spot well. It was almost directly outside Brother Faerbar’s window. The rumbling of the barrel made it impossible to hear anything, but as soon as he stopped, he could listen to them speaking again.

“...nothing beyond that. The letter claims that the palace was filled with evidence of a slaughter, and we have been ordered there with all speed,” the strange priest-candidate said.

“Well - if it’s a rebellion and not something darker, we could well be walking into a trap. The light will not avail nearly as much against mortal enemies as infernal ones,” Brother Faerbar responded thoughtfully.

“There is definitely a taint here. I could feel it through the ink,” the other man said stiffly. “Make sure your cadre is ready because, in Fallravea, we will face true darkness.”

Afraid of being caught, Todd started rolling his barrel once more as soon as he heard that. The details didn’t matter. They could wait until his master felt like dolling them out. All that mattered was that they would finally fight real evil, and his heart thrilled at the news. That wasn’t to say what they’d done in the past wasn’t important and that they didn’t help people, but there was a world of difference between a ghoul or a demon and an old witcher-woman.

The rest of the morning passed without incident. Once Brother Faerbar’s armor was clean and his sword was sharpened, Todd devoted himself to his drills even more than usual. After all, he would have to be ready. He’d grown stronger over the past year as the dual magics of age and training had done their work. He’d begun to feel the light flow through him with purpose now, even if he still had no control over his sight. When it would show him things he’d rather not know, it was great progress, and he felt more than ready to charge into battle with the other Templars. His master saw Todd sweating as he battered the poor training dummy and smiled that knowing smile of his that told Todd that he already knew exactly how much he’d heard and that he was pleased with his squire’s eagerness.

That silent combination of compliment and rebuke kept Todd working hard throughout the day. It was only when the entire Cadre sat down to evening prayers and bowls of hearty vegetable stew that he announced the plan.

“We’re off to Fallravea at sunrise,” he declared. “It will be a hard four-day ride. Plan accordingly; bring your full kit. This isn’t going to be another exercise in bandit hunting.”

Everyone took a minute to absorb the words. He’d probably left out the key details so as not to spoil anyone’s appetite, but it was easy enough to read between the lines and hear what he was actually saying to the veterans. ‘Our enemies are infernal, not mortal.’

“Why can’t we take a ferry downriver,” Brother Darrius asked, “It would save the horses and a whole day besides.”

“You know my stance on the river, Darrius. It’s been tainted, and I believe it might have something to do with the rest of the mission,” Brother Faerbar answered between bites of his meal. “I aim to cross as far upriver as possible and stay well clear of it until we get to the city. Too many ships have disappeared to risk it.”

Brother Darrius nodded but made no argument against his leader. He lacked the sight, so while he respected Brother Faerbar, he’d always been skeptical of the man’s stance on the broad and Meandering Oroza. Especially since that fixation had cost all of them quite a few extra days in the saddle. Todd understood too well, though. Even though the river might look picturesque, he could see the gray-green film that clung to it like an oil slick. His master had petitioned the Hierarch on more than one occasion that he is allowed to go upriver and investigate the source of the taint. However, to date, it had not been deemed to be worth the church’s time.

Perhaps this mission would change that, Todd thought hopefully as he wolfed down his meal. He would sleep sounder if they could find and fix such an apparent evil, but truthfully the world was full of them, and they couldn’t be everywhere at once. He’d even felt the taint of the monastery at Garvin’s gift sometimes. So much blood had been shed in the world that it was hard to find true purity outside the walls of the fortress city of Siddrimar.

. . .

While Todd might enjoy his new home’s clean air and holy aura, he loved being out of it almost as much. Until he’d been taken away by Brother Faerbar practically two years ago, he’d hardly traveled at all in his whole life, now they did it constantly, and he’d grown to love it. As they traveled west on the high road, he looked around at sights he’d already seen a dozen times with fresh eyes. Siddrimar was large enough that small villages crowded every road that led to it for miles and miles in all directions, but after a few hours of riding, they came only every hour or two, and eventually not at all, as the fields gave way to forests.

He’d been told more than once that before the Drowning swept across the land, there were twice as many villages and that the forest never crowded this close to the main roads. It would be years before that was true again, and everything was in its proper place, though. Now you could see the thickets encroaching on the overgrown fields, and occasionally, you could pick out a cottage all but engulfed in ivy, but mostly the communities that had been swept under by the sickness had all but vanished.

On the third night, they camped in what used to be a town on the far side of the river. There were dozens of buildings that were no longer occupied, and the only part that had any life to it was the inn and tavern that stood at the crossroads. They ate there, giving Todd a chance to listen to a bard sing a song about some heroes in a swamp, which seemed appropriate given that they’d just fought in a swamp themselves, even if there hadn’t been anything as exciting as zombies waiting for them.

This was enough for his master to decide that the run-down place was too worldly for them, and as soon as everyone had finished eating, they quickly paid and left. Instead of nice warm beds, they slept on the dusty floor of an empty cottage that still had a working fireplace in their bedrolls. The roof had begun to sag badly in the middle, but it was still enough to keep the rain off, which was all that mattered. The constant drizzle had shown that the autumn had finally begun and that the mighty Oroza would soon fill its banks rather than the muddy trickle it was now.

The most exciting thing that Todd did the rest of the night was gathering firewood, though, even as run down and empty as the area was, he didn’t feel afraid. Not even the rain or distant thunder was enough to make him jump at his own shadow these days, and this place still smelled too much of man for the monsters to move in yet. He still carried his mace with him at all times, of course, but he never once felt the need to lift it from where it hung on his belt.

Things didn’t start to grow worrisome until they were less than a day outside Fallravea. There the sun-ravaged fields had yet to heal, even after all the rain they’d gotten in the last week, and they were greeted by stunted crops and starving people in every little village. Only the villages right on the river had been spared the worst of it, but those families had an evil look that Todd didn’t care for.

Since Brother Faerbar’s trip to the red hills, most of their questing had taken them north and east, but the short conversations that he heard the Stoic Templars sharing amongst themselves certainly agreed with his assessment: things had been much better when they’d last passed this way.

At the end of their journey, all that awaited them was a city in mourning. Their Cadre entered just before sunset, with cloaks covering their armor and as little fanfare as possible. “Evil rarely welcomes our arrival,” Brother Faerbar said as a reminder as they rode down the side streets single file. When they reached the palace, they closed and locked the outer gate, commissioning the city watch to hold the public at bay while they dealt with whatever darkness was contained within in private.

They would sleep in the garden until morning, and only then, after prayer and fasting, would they finally enter the palace proper and discover the truth of the matter.