Tenebroum PLUS 66-75 (Patreon)

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Ch. 66 - Purified

It was on the next to last day before they journeyed north to Siddrimar that priest-candidate Verdenin had a vision. Not far from the warfs, where the squat and ugly toll tower that held the near end of the chain stood, he saw a beautiful temple to Siddrim rising up to shine its light onto the polluted river. To hear him describe it, it was a building of pure light that would transcend anything that had ever been created before in all the reds, oranges, and pinks of a beautiful sunrise, forever showing the people of the region that Siddrim would light the way.

No one doubted the priest-candidate’s communication with the divine. However, it did occur to Todd as he helped the one-armed priest with the initial drawings and what he called the elevation that it was oddly specific. He’d heard of many visions in his lessons about important saints and battle priests. Though some of them had been incredibly vivid, especially in regards to the bloody and terrible end times, none of them that he was aware of had come with measurements.

As more details fell into place on the way back home, it was unlike any of the other temples he’d been in over the years in a number of major ways. It featured the holy number seven quite strongly and would be built as a giant domed edifice with pillars in the outer apise, as was tradition, but somehow the details were off. Todd had trouble putting his fingers on the differences at first, but he could not escape the way that the subtle reflected symmetry was unnatural.

“It will purify the river, I’m sure of it,” the priest candidate had told them around the fire one night while he tried to explain the fountains that he’d chosen especially strange placement for on the roof and near the outer walls. “You see when the spray of water hangs over the oculus like a cloud, day and night, all you’ll see from the inside is the rainbows of that prismatic spray!”

That detail did sound lovely, although Todd had no idea why the priest-candidate thought that such a touch would be needed for a town like Blackwater when a city the size of Fallravea didn’t even have a full temple. It made do with a small shrine, and Todd doubted that a larger, more beautiful edifice would have kept the deprivations of the Oroza at bay.

This was one of many small conversations that the priest-candidate had either to share some strange detail or another or to ask the brothers to pray with him so he might have a better understanding of how this door should be oriented or what scene should play out on this stained glass window. Publicly everyone humored the man, but privately they worried that he’d gone quite mad to develop such a strange fixation. That was a fair worry for Todd because he could see in Brother Verdenin in a way most of them could not, and to him, it looked like the darkness had taken root in the other man’s heart and was slowly growing.

That merely brought back the words of his Master about giving the man time for his soul to heal, and so he tried to be patient with Brother Verdenin. After all, until the day of his vision, the priest had not seemed particularly interested in anything but recording the minutia of the day for his superiors to read later, Todd thought. It was entirely possible that all of this was merely a coping mechanism.

However, it was enough to make him seem like he was a different person. He didn’t even complain about his missing arm or the quality of Todd’s linework anymore. He was just a man possessed, and by the time they reached Fallravea, he had something resembling a plan. Drawn on all the spare pages of the notebook he’d brought with him to record the events of the trip.

The cadre stayed there almost a week to resupply and make their reports to the governor, and in all that time, Priest-candidate Verdenin was almost nowhere to be seen. Todd largely stuck with Brother Faerbar, and though they did examine the city more than once, Todd found that hopelessly depressing. The place was a shell devoid of happiness and light now.

Ironically, one of the only truly happy people he saw the whole time he was there was the infant count that was kept in the governor’s house. Todd would have expected that a child like that, who’d survived such a terrible massacre, to be permanently stained by it. Instead, the child glowed with an inner light that seemed to defy the darkness that hung over everything else, and to him, that was inexplicable.

Todd only found out what had happened to Brother Verdenin as they were preparing to leave the city. The man had found a few artisans that were suspected of evil acts and promised to intercede with his superiors on their behalf if only they would help him with his designs as penance. So he had spent the last week slaving away unceasingly with them to better realize his great work.

The result was a giant set of scrolls displaying delicate linework that made the disturbing designs look somehow beautiful. A normal temple to their God was a bright, sunny affair, and few of the buildings outside or Siddrimar or the capital had much ornamentation. This building was quite ostentatious by comparison, containing fountains on the outside and golden decorations on the inside to demonstrate various important moments in the history of their religion. The entire building somehow managed to become a parable. Though the priest candidate explained that this was necessary to honor both the gold that Siddirm had blessed them with, as well as the river, which was not their burden to bear, it still seemed like an extravagant way to embody those important messages.

Todd didn’t really care either way. He was happy enough to pray anywhere. To him, communing with his God under an open sky was just as good as kneeling beside a simple altar, and he was sure such funds could be better used in other places like the beleaguered Fallravea or any number of the dying villages that they’d passed on their way here. To him, it looked like half of the region might wither and die without help.

Ultimately it didn’t matter what he thought, though. He wouldn’t get a vote. Neither would priest-candidate Verdenin. Only the high priests could decide such things, and given the low opinion of the whole county of Greshen right now, he thought they were unlikely to lift a finger to help the people of the area. The following month he would find out how wrong he was.

. . .

The first thing that had to happen when all of them returned to the Courtyard of the Penetant, other than the funerals that were held immediately as large triumphant bonfires, was that all of them were purified. The weapons and armor of every member of the carde were taken to be cleansed and given plain grey vestments while their clothing was burned. Then all of them stood a midnight vigil and fasted for 48 hours. It was only then that the darkness of everything that they’d slain was said to be shriven from their scarred flesh, and they were permitted to travel deeper into the giant temple city for additional cleansing.

From there, they were confessions to be made and bathes to be taken, but from there, things were quiet for the next few weeks. Brother Faerbar was lauded for the bravery of his men, and a feast was held in their honor that Todd had gotten more than a little drunk at.

They’d been back less than a month when he heard the news. “Your favorite priest-candidate has been promoted,” Micah teased after their first round of sparing. “He’s priest Verdinen now, but the next time you see him, I guess you’ll just be calling him your grace, or sir!”

“Why would I be seeing him again?” Todd asked, genuinely confused. The other boy gave him no answers, though. He just smiled like he had a secret and used it to tease Todd relentlessly as they fought, using that dread to gain an advantage.

He hoped that was all it was, of course, but the exchange nibbled at the back of his mind, and it was only when his Master pulled him aside to chat the following evening that he knew it was true.

“But I don’t want to go with him,” Todd protested after Brother Faerbar spent five minutes telling him about everything that was going to happen next.

Apparently, the priest had not only been successful in petitioning the high council to let the man try to save the Oroza, but he’d been promoted and requested Todd accompany him as part of the team, so Todd would be taking a few years participating in that great project instead of going out into the dark places of the world at his Master’s side.

“All squires that serve The Order of Purgative Flame must spend some time serving another part of the church before they will be deemed worthy to become a Paladin,” Brother Faerbar said, sitting down next to his disappointed squire. “You know this. You’ve known that this day would come for a long while now.”

“Yes,” Todd agreed, “but I was hoping I could serve in the guard and stay here.”

“So you don’t have to see the shades?” his Master asked.

Todd nodded at that. “So I don’t have to see the shades,” he agreed.

“Such gifts were not made to hide behind these walls,” his Master said, putting his arm around Todd’s shoulder and bringing him closer. “We found nothing in Blackwater, but that doesn’t mean that there was nothing to find.”

“But—” Todd tried to interrupt the older man.

“And in all the weeks that Priest Verdenin has healed and regained his will to live,” Brother Faerbar continued, “He has gained a newfound lust for design, but the darkness in his heart has not diminished.”

They both laughed at that for a moment before Todd hazarded a guess. “So you’re saying… you want me to keep an eye on them?”

“I’m saying that since a full-fledged Templar would never be allowed to loiter in such a place, you might see things that others will not,” Brother Faerbar said, “And if there is nothing to be found, then in a few years, you will return to the city and take you place here where you belong in my cadre.”

That mollified Todd, and though the conversation turned to other things, they spent the next couple hours talking about all of the perils and hazards that the Palidin thought the church was facing, both from the outside as well as from within and by the time Todd went to bed his heart was heavy with worry. Though he never would have reduced his Master’s order in the first place, now that he had a better sense of perspective, he could see the wisdom in the older man’s actions. Though it was obvious he hadn’t told his apprentice everything, it was equally obvious that even the Holy City wasn’t quite so safe as he imagined.

The next week they set out on the long trek back, and Todd thought it was quite telling that, unlike his former Master, his new one had chosen to return to Blackwater by boat. It was equally telling that voyage was uneventful, and apart from the stink of corruption from the still-fetid waters, Todd was untroubled, though, toward the end of the voyage, he did start to develop strange dreams.

Ch. 67 - The Shadow of Dishonor

It was on the night of winter’s first full moon while he was bathing deep in the pits of warm mud in the place of honor he’d earned that Tsson’vek saw what the darkness had done to the drake he’d killed years before. Its once-mottled scales of emerald and olive green had been transformed into a shimmering coat of inky blackness, and its wings had multiplied, but he was still sure of what he saw.

The fearsome hunter that had been a living embodiment of grace and death was gone. In its place was a strange mockery of those characteristics. It flew neither as fast nor as far as the original drake had, and that saddened the lizardman.

He thought about it often for weeks and then months, both when he lay with his kin and when he went off to hunt for food. There was no joy anymore when he looked to the top of their totem and saw the image of the drake’s head that had been carved in his honor.

For years Tsson’vek had endured the secret shame of knowing that it was the poison gifts the darkness had given him that had killed the monster and not his own spear, but he’d lived with that decision. Seeing it alive once more, though, was too far, and day by day, it ate at him.

His only joy was in looking at his mate and his own hatchlings and seeing that they were perfectly happy and healthy. He was glad that the darkness was not something that passed in the blood or through touch and contact. It was a choice, and Tsson’vek had chosen poorly.

He was preoccupied with these thoughts for a long time, but it was only when he saw the abomination once more on another spring night that he flew into an inconsolable rage though. There were no greater creatures left to prove to himself that he was strong enough to merit his undeserved honor, and he gnashed his teeth and howled at the sky. That was when he decided he would have to start killing if he wanted to cut this cancer out.

Tsson’vek waited until the light of day so that the darkness that dwelled within him all the time now was at its weakest, and then, during a hunt, he challenged Tsgrun and Vz’lasst each in turn. The two of them were the next largest and most tainted hunters of the tribe, and Tsson’vek could no longer bear to look at their black, mottled scales that were so similar to his own. They might not have had the crooked bones or as many of jagged scars, but they still stank of the unnatural corruption that he was surrounded by.

The hunter fought his first rival with spears and parried the deadly blow that aimed for his heart before he impaled Tsgrun through the throat. He left him there choking on his own blood even though he knew that probably wouldn’t be enough to kill him in the face of the dark gifts that they all had, but he had no time to finish the job properly as he was suddenly matched claw for claw and bite for bite with Vz’lasst.

Fights for dominance within the tribe were not uncommon, though they were rarely fatal. This was not about dominance, though. This was about fixing a terrible mistake. Even as he used his unnatural strength to rip the head off of his opponent while the smaller lizardman struggled feebly, he felt nothing but revulsion about what he’d become. They’d conquered this land and made it their own, but at what cost?

Lost in thought for a moment, Tsson’vek was brought back to reality as his other opponent recovered enough to stab Tsson’vek in the side with an obsidian dagger. He quickly broke it off inside the wound, which would make healing harder, but it wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide here.

Staggering, Tsson’vek turned back to the mortally wounded Tsgrun and yanked the spear in his throat in the other lizard man’s throat out before he ripped it out with his teeth. Even then, the strength that the darkness had lent them was still strong enough that Tsgrun struggled weakly until Tsson’vek’s spear was lodged in his heart.

Wounded, Tsson’vek turned to fight other members of the tribe that were showing signs of the corruption he now hated. The juveniles from last year’s hatching had seemed particularly vulnerable, and Tsson’vek knew that if he didn’t expunge such a stain now, then soon it would envelop the whole tribe.

He would never get the chance to complete that task, though. Partway through his bloody purge, the darkness woke and turned its eye on him long enough to understand that this wasn’t about bloodlust or ambition but about rejection. As soon as it discovered that fact, Tyson’vek found himself unable to move. He collapsed bonelessly by the main firepit and lay there looking up at the totem pole he hated so much while the remaining members of the tribe restrained him.

He didn’t live in fear of what was going to happen to him. After all, Tyson’vek was happy to die in exchange for the cleansing he’d unleashed for the good of the tribe. In time he hoped that they would heal completely. After all, now their valley was largely safe. What need to have any of them for the gifts of their dark master?

He didn’t have to wait long to find out what was going to happen to him. It was only just after sunset that he was bundled to the shore of their lake by four strong warriors and set upon the ferry that he’d seen so often after they’d brought down a particularly large creature that the darkness wished to feast upon.

This time the juggernaut was not here, but there was no need for it. Even without the vines that bound him hand and foot, Tsson’vek could not move. All he could do was watch as the skeletal hooded bargeman poled out into the deeper waters.

This part of the journey had always confused the lizardman, for there seemed to be no navigable waters between their high mountain valley and the swamp they’d left below. There were streams that connected the two, it was true, but they were full of rapids and waterfalls that would make a vessel of this size dangerously impractical.

Still, it didn’t seem to matter. They spent the next hour going deeper and deeper into a fog bank, and then suddenly, the mist had cleared, and they were somewhere else entirely. They were now poling down a small canal toward a dark tunnel entrance, though there seemed to be no sign of the swamp he remembered. Instead, there were only tilled fields and distant mountains. It didn’t seem possible that they’d come so far from the place he’d called home so quickly, but he wasn’t aware of any other mountains in the area, so surely magic was at work here as well.

The canal continued underground for a few minutes, and when it finally came to dock at its tiny stygian port, the ferryman waved his hands over the vines, and they shriveled into dust as it gestured for its passenger to proceed through a large verdigrised door.

The inky darkness of that place was almost absolute when the ferry docked. The whole area was lit by a single brazier that burned with blue fire. As soon as Tsson’vek walked toward that light, it began to dim, and another one further down the hall proceeded to light in its place, guiding him ever deeper into a labyrinth of twisted stone hallways from which it knew it would never escape.

The lizardman followed the light as it moved, unable to resist the compulsion. His limbs were no longer his own, and all he could do was walk helplessly toward his ultimate fate; he did not know what that would be, but he still felt no fear. The only sensation left was the painful feeling of the knife twisting in his guts with every step, but there was nothing for it.

The walk took longer than the ferry ride had, and the twisting path that he was led through seemed almost impossible to map or even traverse without a guide. It was only after almost half an hour of walking that he found a ramp that descended to a lower level. Here the tunnels were just as twisted and claustrophobic, of course, but they were also bustling with activity. In every room it passed, something was being done. Strange surgeons were splicing corpses together in one, and forges were being worked by dead men in another. Here was a room full of golden treasures, and there was a storage room full of nothing but rank upon rank of dead warriors who’d been riveted inside their armor.

Tsson’vek couldn’t understand many of the details or purposes behind them, but he didn’t care. All of this only reinforced his view: he’d made the correct decision. None of the zombies that crossed his path carrying this or that tried to stop him, and it was only when he reached a small, quiet room with a strange golden idol that he felt he could finally stop.

Here the walls were gold, in strange patterns that reeked of magic to him, but that wasn’t what caught Tsson’vek’s interest. In front of those odd walls were fellow lizardmen. Or rather, corpses of them. They were so old and so still that they had a layer of dust on them. Tsson’vek knew that they were no mere trophies or decorations, though. They were warriors with cruel bronze blades that could easily hack him to pieces.

Was this how he was to die, Tsson’vek wondered. That was when he heard the deathless voice in his mind.

“You disappointed me, Tsson’vek,” the darkness whispered. “You were such a diligent warrior until today, but now you will be made to suffer for your betrayal.”

Tsson’vek growled, casting his gaze around before he looked again at the strange golden lump in the center of the room. Was that the darkness? Was that what he’d feared all this time? It was nothing but a screaming drizzled in molten metal. There was nothing to fear here, he realized, and he tensed his muscles, trying to break free of the control that had been placed on him so that he could rip the heart out of the thing that was polluting his people and save them once and for all.

“You will get the chance to save them,” the darkness whispered. “After all, I’ve finally figured out where your confused ferocity can be put to the best use in my plans.”

The words came with an electric jolt of pain that brought the lizardman to his knees, but with that pain came clarity, and he slowly pushed himself back to his feet as he reached his clawed hand down to his wound.

“Impressive,” the darkness crooned in his ear, “Even after all that, you think a traitor like you could ever hope to strike me down?”

As the darkness spoke, Tsson’vek pulled the jagged piece of obsidian from his side and raised it high. He would end this. Even as the pain blossomed into agony and those agonies multiplied until every single one of his scales was on fire, he fought it and took another step forward.

He never got the chance to strike, though. While he dragged himself toward his goal an inch at a time, one of the lizardmen behind him that had stood there for uncounted years strode forward, and with two quick strokes, it severed Tsson’vek’s head from his body and then split that body in half from neck to nail, leaving its corpse a bloody ruin on the ground.

No death came for him, though. Not even unconsciousness came to grant him mercy. Instead, the darkness let his severed head sit there and watch as the blood pooled before it finally whispered. “Soon, you will serve me as loyally and as long as your forebearer who just ended your miserable life, for at last, I have found my shadow dragon.”

Ch. 68 - Mournden

Though he did not know whether the Lich left him for a week or a year, his screams echoed through the dead city for a long time as Krulm’venor suffered in the same way he’d made his own victims suffer. He’d always enjoyed the brief screams that his victims would make until their lungs were too charred to breathe anymore, but the fire god was given no such relief. Instead he screamed for an eternity in the dark, and the goblins trapped in his body with him feasted on his pain.

By the time the Lich came back, he’d bathed for so long in those gutteral, chanting voices that he could no longer block them out, and only the touch of darkness as the Lich entered his mind was enough to cool the flames that had heated his metal bones until they’d glowed a dull red-orange. When the question followed, the fire god had no more resistance to give, and could only lay there in defeat while the Lich asked his terrible question again.

“Are you ready to tell me where the dwarves take their honored dead?” it hissed in his mind, obviously enjoying the terrible pain he’d endured for so long.

“Mournden” Krulm’venor said, trying not to whimper as he struggled to get control of his spasming body. “It is a city built for the dead. It is a clanless fortress monestary, where the best of us from all the great cities of the region are interred. Even in the midst of war it lies forever at peace.”

“Then this is a place you must visit for me,” the Lich whispered, obviously pleased with the idea that it had found more souls to devour. “If I am to defeat your All-Father one day, then I must know more about the dwarven soul. Proceed there at once, hound!”

This terrible utterance was almost enough to put the steel back in Krulm’venor’s spine, but at soon as he opened his mouth to speak, a jolt of fear at the memory of all he’d endured shot through him. Instead, all he could bring himself to say was, “Yes… master.” For years he’d fought this thing inside him, and every attempt at resistance had made it worse. Now he couldn’t imagine anything that would make him say no to the Lich again.

The the darkness vanished along with his self respect, leaving him only with shame, both at what he’d just done, and what he was about to do. Krulm’venor stood immediately lest laying on the cold stone be interperated as deffiance by all the spirits that dwelled within him now. There would be no delaying this. Now that he knew he was in Ghen’tal, he was no longer lost, he was home.

He was at the heart of everything that had been lost because of his pride and his folly. He’d attempted to usher in a golden age of perfection, but instead he’d ended up here, with no one left to worship a city god, or to offer their prayers in the form of regular blows on the anvil. It was a tragedy, but it was going to get worse soon. Even the fact that the Lich had finally done what he’d long thought impossible didn’t help. It had evicted the shadows that had stolen this city for decades, but even that did not cheer him, because Krulm’venor, knew better than anyone in the world what that monster would do with the souls of his kin, and it disgusted him.

As Krulm’venor started walking a step at a time toward that hallowed place where he himself had once been interred, he would have weeped if such a thing was possible. Instead all he could do was listen to the voices in his head that feasted on his despair.

‘Murderer! Traitor!’ one whined particularly loudly, accusing him of doing terrible things he knew to be true.

‘Bring us to the darkness. Let it help them as it has helped us and helps you…’ another whispered, sending a shiver of revulsion up the fire god’s spine. The darkness had done nothing to help him, and the fact that he could understand the goblins that had burrowed deep inside his soul was revolting enough. He hoped to die before they finally started making sense to him.

They went on an on like that for hours. Even after he left the city and got his emotions under control they still whispered to him.

‘Find us more to fight and to kill,’ a feverish voice demanded. ‘We want to kill and maim!’

Krulm’venor had to grudgingly agree with that one. The only thing that would make him feel better was finding a nice kolbold warren to exterminate or fungoid patch to burn down. That would slow the inevitable at least, and give him a few hours

No matter how far he walked though, he found no victims to fight. That wasn’t unusual. At this depth, monsters were few and clustered near the underground rivers. The rest of the deeps were a desert of cold, dark stone. If one went a few hundred feet further down then the world was full of shadows, and a if they instead went a few hundred feet up, there was only a was a maze of goblin dens and kobold warrens. That was why dwarven settlements that were higher up were fortresses, and why there was basically nothing below them. Well, nothing but Mournden, but it was protected by the eternal flame, and no matter how the shadows circled, they could not hope to taste the souls that dwelled there.

So, other than the occasional shadow that Krulm’venor turned to ash, it was an uneventful journey for the most part, and though he did his very best to walk as slowly as possible, he eventually saw a light in the distance. Only then did the Lich rejoin him.

“Is that your city of the dead?” the Lich asked.

“I thought it was, but it is moving, so it might yet be a procession leading there,” Krulm’venor answered, hoping he was wrong.

“Show me,” the Lich rasped.

A funeral procession to the sacred city was supposed to be the pinnacle of a long life well lived and the last thing Krulm wanted to do was disrupt that. Still, he couldn’t disobey, and he sped up so he could get a better look.

He’d been wrong. It was both a procession, and the city of the dead that he’d seen. The thing was built as a tower that practically held up the earth in a giant cavern, but the thousand tiny windows radiated holy light into the darkness to keep everything that lingered there at bay. His heart sank as he realized he was already where he least wanted to be. Even as he got close enough that he could start to make out the familiar details of the ritual, he saw the gilded gates beyond them slowly swinging open. Still, as the Lich asked question, Krulm’venor explained.

He told the darkness in his head about the lantern bearers that were as much tradition as protection at the beginning and end of the procession. A King’s procession might have three or four of the giant many lensed oil lamps, but this group only had two, and each was carried on long poles between two stout dwarves. They couldn’t fight much while they were holding the delicate things, but this deep, light was the most powerful weapon at all.

Not that it would have stopped Krulm’venor to turning the lot of them into charred meat at the Lich’s command, but then, something like him shouldn’t even exist. He should have died with the forge fires of Ghen’tal. If he didn’t exist than the Lich would never have dug this deep. Arguably it might not have ever left the swamp without his help with the goblin armies. No - it was his desire to survoive no matter the cost that had caused all this pain, and it was about to get to much worse, unless there was a miracle.

By the time they reached the doors, Krulm’venor was thankful that they’d shut once more, and even as he approached crossbow bolts began to rain down on him from hidden arrow slits, but such toys were useless and those that did not sail cleanly through his ribs, bounced harmlesly off his steel skeleton. Deep down, he hoped that one of the warriors here would have the temerity to pick up one of the hallowed mithril weapons that were intered here along with their wielders and finally put him out of his misery, but he doubted that he would be so lucky.

Instead, at the Lich’s command he flared outward, and bathed the arrow slits in waves of unnatural blue flame, blinding and burning the dwarves that hid on the other side of the stone. He could  hear bellows of shock and pain, but he could do little besides feel guilty about them before he turned the true power of his fire on to the near door.

The gates of Mournden were giant 30 foot tall doors of bronze covered in almost an inch of gold, so they were resistant to heat, but not immune to it, and by this point the Lich’s magical reserves were practically limitless, so minute after minute he poured out the cold fire from his soul. It slowly intensified, as it shifted from blue to violet and finally an eye-searing white-cyan. The cooler colors only splashed harmlessly off the doors, but the white flame was much more powerful. Not only was it bright enough to weaken the Lich’s hold on him for a moment, but in drilled right through the metal, letting him slowly cut his own entrance through the foot-thick doors.

After the better part of an hour of cutting, he finally stepped onto the concecreted ground of dwarven kings and smith-saints, and he could feel the change immediately as the holy power flared around him and arced painfully from his body to his limbs, but the Lich didn’t care. It feasted on his suffering even as it stared out his eyes in wonder at the scene before it.

Mournden was a thirty story rotunda, with nothing more than a simple dias and a brazier glowing bright white in the center of the room. On the ground floor near the walls were the tombs of the regions greatest heroes, and plaques marking their deeds for all to see, even though only the dead came here. Most of those tombs were decorated with the weapons they’d use to achieve them, and axes of adimantine and mitrhil could be seen just as often as rune scribed forging hammers.

For those dwarves who’d lived good, long lives, but failed to achieve such a pinnacle, their skulls were placed in positions of honor in one of ten thousand thousand cubbies that lined the wall in row after countless row of crystalline skulls. That was why only the old dead came here. It took centuries for dwarven bones to crystalize completely, and by the time a dwarf died of old age after almost four centuries of life, the skin and soft tissue practically dissolved on death, leaving only the mana dense bones of centuries as a testament to that life, and all of that energy was given to the All-Father for generation after generation.

What the Lich hadn’t understood when it glimpsed the mosaic of the All-Father was that the art was not metaphorical. In a very real sense, Their god was literally made up by the dead here, and in other places like Mournden. The All-Father was a fortress of dwarven spirituality, but even the mightiest fortress could be torn down brick by brick.

Here at least though, there were defenders, ready to fight to the last dwarf to hold off the attack they didn’t understand. Including the already injured monks, there were perhaps 50 dwarves ready to bring him down. Krulm’venor prayed that would be enough, and continued to move forward despite the pain of the smouldering ground beneath his feet and the couriscating holy fire that arced between his ribs. The light weakened him, but he knew it would not be enough. The Lich’s flesh crafters and artisans had done their work too well.

There was only one thing left to do, and though he knew not what the Lich would do to him if it failed, he still had to try. “Kill me!” he yelled out, speaking in dwarven for the first time in a very long time. “Kill me or the thing that did this will poison the All-Father and—-”

Krulm’venor was interrupted by a cold agony, and not the burning sensation he’d expected after such an act of defiance, as he felt the Lich putting him back into the little cage he’d been kept in for years.

“You are always such a disappointment, my impotent godling,” the Lich whispered in his mind. “Did you really think you could just endure the pain for a few minutes while you let them kill one of my servants. Just like I control every drudge and abmonation, I control you, down to your fingers and toes. If you’d prefer to watch as I slaughter your kin, rather than help, than so be it. I’ll do this myself.”

Ch. 69 - The Eternal Flame

Even as the first waves of dwarves charged at him, the Lich began to flex and move in the unfamiliar body. It had only been the last few months that it had begun using drudges to practice walking and moving for the day when it finally had a body again. Not that it saw a need for such things normally. It was more efficient for it to sit there on its throne as the nerve center for the vast web of activity than to focus all its attention on a single place like this, but this was too important to let Krulm’venor deny him such a prize. So, the Lich would tear its enemies apart itself.

It was clumsy and slow as it moved but not as slow as the creatures of flesh that surrounded it. Krulm’venor could have burned them all to ashes, but it lacked the flames of the other spirit, and its shadows would not be effective until the infernal light was doused, so it would do this the hard way. T

he Lich taped his vast magical reserve to damped the effect on him, as the infinite well of shadows in his soul counteracted the light. It would not make for an offensive weapon just now, but it would ablate the damage that the seering radiance inflicted on it so casually.

The first warrior to attack it with a heavy war hammer managed to actually hit the Lich because it was too distracted with adjusting mana flows and trying to stay upright as it integrated with the metal skeleton. The blow was hard enough to crush a normal man’s skull, but it just made the Lich take half a step back as it threatened to fall over before it lashed out in rage, taking his attacker’s head clean off with a casual backhand.

“You will not touch me!” the Lich shouted loudly enough to echo.

This was another reason that it didn’t care for bodies. Safe in its throne room, it could never be harmed, but here? Now? One of these filthy creatures might actually damage it, and that was intolerable. It had touched tens of thousands of lives, but none of them were permitted to do the same to it. The thought was completely unacceptable, and the Lich would not stand for it.

When the next dwarf swung his axe at it, the Lich was ready and stepped to the side before he snapped the presumptuous warrior’s neck. Looking around the room, it grew weary just thinking about just how many times it would have to do something so demeaning. There were dozens of warriors still alive, and except for a few priests praying at an altar near the far wall, they were all bent on chopping the Lich into pieces if they could. If it only it had full access to its shadow magic, it could have already ripped everyone’s souls from their bodies.

The Lich grabbed the nearest warrior by his arm and swung him about like a club, knocking the others out of its way as it continued toward the center of the room. It had made its decision. It would destroy the light first and then fight the dwarves in the dark. They tried to stop it, of course, but their attacks, though well coordinated, were far less threatening than the intensity of the light as it got closer and closer to the man-sized brazier in the center of the room.

The Lich left a trail of corpses in its wake as it climbed the dias, and by the time it stood at the very threshold of the eternal flame, its steel bones were smoldering and sparking, while the annihilation of opposite elements of dark and light that were occurring, emitted a foul black smoke from the parts of it that were steadily burning away. This forced the Lich to pour out even more power just to keep its hands from disintegrating as it grasped the lip and flipped the thing over. As it did so, it could hear Krulm’venor screaming in its mind, which was a welcome sound. But Lich was so focused on gloating to the godling that it almost missed the sound of the warhammer flying towards it.

The Lich saw the danger at the last moment, but it was too late to dodge. That was just as well because it was too late for whomever had thrown the glowing weapon to stop the Lich. At the moment of impact, the incandescent object was the only light it could see, but as it slammed into the Lich’s chest, knocking it off the dias and sending it twenty feet across the room, it could see a second source of light, too: the thing that had thrown the weapon.

“Begone, foul demon!” the glowing dwarf roared. “My light is not yours to dampen!”

The Lich forced itself to stand, noting that several of its ribs had been cracked as it felt its own pain for the first time since the day that it died. It didn’t like the sensation, though it did feel a flash of fear. Was a god itself confronting it? That wasn’t supposed to happen yet. It wasn’t the plan, and the Lich wasn’t sure it would be able to handle such a thing. However, when it looked more closely, it saw what had happened. This was not a god. This was a mortal that had been infused with the powers of their deity in the same way it channeled its shadows through Krulm’venor and Oroza so often.

That was a more manageable threat, it decided as the glowing dwarf walked towards it.

“You stand on the bones of heroes, and you shall die for desecrating them!” it called out, slamming the but of its warhammer on the ground.

That was no meer gesture. The Lich could feel the wave of energy that rippled outward in all directions. Then, seconds later, the ghosts of the very heroes that were buried in the ornamental tombs around the edge of the temple began to rise from their graves and pick up their weapons.

“You cannot kill me,” the Lich said as it walked towards its enemy, noticing that it was now limping slightly from the mighty blow. “You cannot kill death, nor can you use the dead against it!”

The Lich reached out and began to vie for control of the legion of translucent warriors advancing on it. If nothing else, it was a good gauge for the power of the thing that opposed it. It wasn’t impressed, though. Standing there in the nearly dark room, it couldn’t quite usurp that power because of the consecrated ground that weakened it, but its dwarvish enemy couldn’t seem to fight it off either, and one by one, the ghostly warriors froze in place as the two of them tugged at the souls in a contest of control in which they were for the moment fairly evenly matched.

“Impertent dog!” the avatar of the All-Father yelled. You dare to touch the souls of my heroes!”

“You imperious buffon,” the Lich responded. “Dare you fight me in a place so dark?”

The avatar realized its mistake and flared its aura all the brighter for it, but the Lich was already planning a terrible attack. It opened its mouth, and instead of screaming, a thousand of the shadows it had devoured in Ghen’tal vomited forth. The shadowy warrior flickered to life and charged at the glowing avatar, each wearing the face of a dwarf they’d devoured.

Warriors of pure shadow would never reach their goal with that much light pouring off the dwarf. They weren’t supposed to, though. They were just a distraction to weaken the light’s hold on the ghosts it had raised. While they swarmed the avatar, it cast its gaze around the room until it found one of the ghosts with a crossbow. The weakness of the avatar was not in the god that puppeted it but the fragile vessel that held so much power.

So, the Lich poured its indomitable will into that single spirit, crushing its ability to resist. Then, in a single instant, it turned and shot its bolt not at the metal skeleton on the dias but as the servant of its own god. The Lich would have smiled then if it had possessed lips. It watched the bolt fly through the air just as the heavenly avatar was finishing off the last of its shadowy horde and penetrated the protective bubble of light, piercing the mortal beneath just above the sternum.

“You monster!” the thing cried out. “You think this can stop a god with healing powers that you’ll never understand? You—”

The bolt had just been one more distraction. It had seen the healing magics of Siddrim in great detail now, and it knew such a blow was nowhere near mortal, but every wound and distraction further weakened its hold on its own ghostly minions, and as the avatar paused to pull out the bolt and heal the wound the Lich was turning one ghostly warrior after another to its side.

By the time the avatar of light was aware of what had happened, it was badly outnumbered, and the Lich’s new forces were advancing. What happened next was not a battle but a slaughter. The living could not hope to face the dead, and some wouldn’t even raise a weapon against a hero they had such a high opinion of, but that would not save them, and one by one, life was massacred in the room until the only person still breathing was the dwarven avatar.

He’d done everything he could to save himself, and his skin was now bronze, and the healing magics kept a dozen fatal wounds from overpowering him, but he no longer had a chance. Even as the Lich closed in on him with an utterly normal battle axe, the dying avatar tried to overwhelm him with blasts of holy light and forge fires. The latter was useless, and the former was painful, though hardly dangerous.

“The All-Father will hunt you down, you monster!” the avatar of the divine said while the cruel, twisted skeleton stood above him. He will find you, and you’ll—”

Those were its last words, and the Lich clumsily brought the axe down on the man’s head, splitting it in two.

“I hope he does,” the Lich rasped, “You can tell your All-Father that I’m coming for him next.”

As the avatar died and the Lich devoured the last of the glowing spirits, it was finally once more alone in the dark with only the tiny guttering flame of Krulm’venor to provide any light at all.

The godling had mentioned that the shadows were only kept away by the light that the Lich had now extinguished, so it had expected that something might happen next, but the scale surprised even it. As the lights went out, suddenly, a tide of shadows swept into the building. Windows shattered, and some of the crystal skulls were knocked from their places of honor onto the catwalks in front of them as an umbric tide swept into the building like a physical thing.

These creatures had no idea what it had done to their kind in the last place it had found them, as there had been no survivors, but here the things were much more numerous. How many centuries had they stirred and paced at the edge of the light, waiting for their chance to devour the dwarven souls laid to rest here, the Lich wondered.

It didn’t know, but it knew that they would not have a chance to steal its feast, and just like last time, it opened up the yawning whirlpool of power in its soul and devoured the endless tide before it even understood what was happening. After the first few seconds, the furthest shadows started to flee. They would be the only ones to escape because even as the Lich was enveloped in hoarfrost and ice, its hunger grew, and its reach expanded. It hadn’t even touched the dwarven souls, but it would once it had finished dealing with these delicious creatures.

Ch. 70 - Foundations

The first several months Todd spent with Priest Verdenin was a dull and lonely time that made him miss the brothers he’d spent the last couple of years fighting beside. There was nothing wrong with the man that Todd could put his finger on precisely, but his presence and the way that his superior did things chaffed at him.

It wasn’t even the imperous way he used to treat Todd because he no longer seemed to value of ordering him around to do menial things. Instead, the priest practically lived in his own world. He was constantly designing strange new plumbing fixtures or deciding what parable would be the most uplifting in the south facing stained glass windows. If Todd hadn’t known better, he would have been certain that Brother Verdenin had died and been replaced by someone else during their trips into the depths of Fallravea.

From the riverboat trip to Blackwater to the way he organized things once he’d arrived, he had Todd perpetually on edge. When he started unilaterally razing buildings for the site of Siddrim’s future temple without so much as discussing it with the head of the city guard or the mayor of the burgeoning town, he’d thought there would be a riot. Instead, people just accepted it, which struck Todd as odd.

He’d known that Brother Faerbar and his fellow templars had put the fear in this town, but he hadn’t expected it to last for months in their absence. Todd and a few of his fellows could hardly be expected to stand against dozens or hundreds of angry men, but they never materialized.

Instead, Priest Verdenin began to hire the excess riffraff as laborers to clear the area and install new brick streets to replace the crude rotted boards that were the current standard throughout the town. Todd wanted no part of that, of course, though he did take two trips up the canal in the following weeks to escort the one-armed priest while they looked at likely sandstone quarries near the banks of the waterway.

It was a tense time for Todd, as he was made the leader of the small band of warriors assigned to protect the priest and his artisans. Every night he went to bed in his armor, fearing there’d be an ambush from the dark, and every morning he woke up unharmed. It was a mystery, but one he eventually chalked up to his childhood fear of the monsters that called the red hills home.

According to other members of the church that he’d spoken with, the stones of Siddrim’s temples were usually brought down from the mountains to the north, where there was a quarry with marble of the purest white. For the structure they were going to start building soon, though, the priest had received special dispensation to use sunrise colored sandstone found in the area.

“Don’t you see, it’s not just about cost, but the beauty!” the priest said, setting several of the rock samples they’d retrieved on the way back to the city. “The only way we ever inspire those ne’er-do-wells is to give them a taste of Siddrim’s grace they can’t help but look at every day!”

While Todd did have to admit that the shades of orange, pink, and red sandstone that the priest had chosen did look lovely together, and that they might create a very sunrise-like effect, he still harbored private reservations that he didn’t know how to express. The importance wasn’t just the color white, after all; it was the purity of the stone that came from such a high and distant field. It was the opposite of the red hills.

If you’d told him that the red color of the stone came from centuries of goblins murdering anyone that happened through there, Todd would have believed it. Centuries of mindless slaughter were pretty much the opposite of purity as far as he was concerned, but the only time Todd brought it up, the priest had laughed at him. “There’s one crucial fact your theory forgets, young man. Goblin blood is green. If it was really tainted by the cycle of death you describe, then the stones we’ve spent the last week looking at would be olive, emerald, and forest, nor orange, salmon, and coral.”

Chagrined, Todd hadn’t brought it up again, but the point festered. Eventually, he started to think he was going crazy. After all - they’d been out in the red hills for more than a week all together but theyhadn’t suffered a single goblin attack. That seemed very unlikely to him. The Gift was still attacked almost every month, and the few villages left in the region also reported occasional attacks, but the small group of humans traveling alone in the wilderness had received almost no attention at all. It was almost as if the goblins had been ordered to leave their group alone, but that was impossible, wasn’t it?

While the first stones were being cut to lay the foundations, Todd spent those weeks consecrating and reconsecrating the ground upon which the temple would rest. Each time he finished, he felt his god’s peace, but each morning he felt as if it had somehow faded a bit overnight. And the faint light he saw no longer shined as brightly as it once had. It was a conundrum, but one that he was forced, ultimately, to associate with the low quality of people that were doing the work of clearing the space and bringing in the stone.

Until the day that they held the ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone, Todd tried to stay away from his superior as much as possible, though he wouldn’t have admitted it. He cleaned Siddrim’s shrine, patrolled the back alleys looking for signs of villains, and took long rides through the countryside just to get away from the smell of the river, but the priest never seemed to care. Now that he had those artists he’d found in Fallravea, he no longer needed Todd to write his letters, which frustrated him to no end since that was the reason he’d come with the priest in the first place.

Lately, he’d been lost in the minutia of setting up a small workshop for the production of plaster casts and molds for all the ornate decorations that he’d planned. Todd would have thought that they should focus on having walls to decorate first, but the priest obviously disagreed. This was on top of the stone carvers he’d brought in from the capital to begin carving likenesses of the saints that the temple would be dedicated to.

To Todd, all of this was putting the cart before the horse, but in the end, it wasn’t his problem. His duty was to keep Brother Verdenin safe and to keep his eyes open for any hints that the evil inside the man might be growing. The priest was in no danger as long as he kept spending such vast sums of money to build his vision, though. Todd was sure of that. The residents of Blackwater were wealthier than they’d ever been, thanks to the church’s spending. At this point, perhaps a third of the growing town was connected to the project in one way or another.

Todd never really appreciated that until he saw all of them at once, gathered on the prepared ground in front of the cornerstone where the priest gave his invocation for the dedication. There were hundreds of people in attendance, and though many of them were dull-eyed laborers that were obviously being forced to attend as they stared at their feet, the rest of them seemed to ardently believe in Brother Verdenin’s great project. Todd found that shocking, but not as shocking as the blood he found on the cornerstone the next day.

“Brother Verdenin, you must come at once,” Todd said, waking his superior.

“Wha-what’s happened?” he asked, still drowsing in his bed when he should have already been awake.

Priests of Siddrim were required to wake with the sun, but due to Brother Verdenin’s injury and the pain and weakness it caused him, he was permitted to sleep in as necessary, which turned out to be almost every day, much to Todd’s dismay.

“Someone has desecrated the cornerstone!” Todd said breathlessly. “You must come at once!”

That at least got Brother Verdenin out of bed, and as he quickly dressed, Todd relayed to him what he’d seen. “Despite the drizzle of light rain, I’d gone to the building site to say my prayers. When I got there though, I saw the sun rose over the water. That was when I noticed the cornerstone drenched in blood. There were footprints in the wet sand too, along with an aura of evil. I fear that last night some cult conducted some dark ritual there to taint our work.”

They arrived only a few minutes later, but it had already begun to pour, and by the time they reached the stone, most of the blood he’d seen just ten minutes before had washed away.

“Are you sure that what you saw wasn’t just red stone dust?” the priest asked him skeptically. “Because after carving in the words of—”

“I know what I saw,” Todd shot back angrily, hurt that the priest would ever doubt him.

“Acolyte, I’ve been very lax with you and your assignments, but this behavior is completely unacceptable,” the priest admonished him. “Once you are dry, you are to copy the Psalms of Sorrow until you—”

“But Brother Verdenin—” Todd tried to interrupt, but he was cut off immediately.

“You will copy the Psalms of Sorrow, in seclusion, until you regret the way that you have treated a priest of your god!” he repeated himself in a way that would brook no argument before he stormed off, leaving Todd alone with no evidence but his own gut instincts that something was amiss and that somehow the priest that was admonishing him was in on it.

Todd spent the next three days in his small room copying the same few pages over and over as he tried to find some amount of regret for his actions. He couldn’t, though. In the end, the only thing he regretted was that he hadn’t thought to somehow take the evidence with him or shelter it from the elements.

Once he’d decided that collusion was the only possible way he could explain what had happened, he managed to create the mien of compliance and contrition. He felt like a fraud for lying to his superior so, but he could no longer trust the man enough to tell him the truth.

So instead of working with him, he began to spy on him. Instead of wandering around the town in search of some hidden conspiracy, he began to look for one in the construction site he’d sword to protect. Each day he got up and helped the workmen with their tasks or simply supervised them as they brought the stones in from the barge while the walls steadily grew, and though he saw nothing untoward, he was sure that he was on the right trail because the longer he persisted in helping, the more Brother Verdenin found excuses to send him away.

“Todd, please fetch these manifests from the tax clerk’s office.”

“Todd, please ride upriver to see if my next shipment is on its way.”

Every week it was something new, and almost always toward dusk. Even on the nights Todd doubled back and observed the masons hard at work on their ever-growing project, he still couldn’t see anything obviously wrong, but his certainty only increased. Something was deeply wrong in Blackwater, and he needed to find out what, just like Brother Faerbar had tasked him.

Ch. 71 - Brick by Brick

From less than a hundred feet away, the Lich watched the structure rising just above its lair with great interest. Even though it should have hated the idea of a rival god building a grand temple on its very doorstep, it was fascinated by the process. This fascination wasn’t limited by the physical ether. It included the way the structure and the devotion of its builders resonated into the ether, trying to change the entire landscape. Anywhere else, it would have already dominated the region, but not here. Here no matter how powerful the beacon, it was the Lich that held sway.

Every day something about it changed, and a new course of stones was set into place, or another pillar was erected. It couldn’t look away because if it focused on something else, even for one night, opportunities would be lost. Compared to its usual efforts, the construction proceeded quite quickly, and day after day, the temple grew. That was only during daylight hours, though. Once the builders went home, its servants desecrated in a thousand little ways night after night.

Of course, some of the people who worked on fitting the stones together with great care knew that, but most did not. None of them knew they were working for it exactly. They just felt the need to obey and carry out their little acts of defiance. It was a game of shadows, and the darkness had been getting better about manipulating people without being too heavy-handed. When one was attempting to undermine the holy without making the entire work seem profane and tarnished enough for the foolish humans to start anew, one had to proceed slowly and carefully.

An animal sacrifice here. A curse etched into the underside of a block there. Every piece of work was marred and blighted in ways that no one might ever notice. It would, though. It could see the house of cards that was being erected, as every part of The Sunset Temple was turned into a house of cards so that it would be the perfect vessel for what came next.

It knew how thin the layer of consecrated earth was and how little energy it would have to use to burn that flimsy barrier away to nothing. Gone were the days when the Lich needed to fear the might of a single temple. The priests might feel like they were building a fortress of faith, but there were already rats in the walls, and they had knawed out most of the strength that should have been there, replacing it with nothing but darkness.

Violating the new temple wasn’t the only project the Lich was working on, of course. In the time since it had returned from the depths weeks ago, it had been very busy. It would have been content to leave the traitorous Krulm’venor in a block of ice for decades as punishment for his latest slights, but the Lich found it difficult to stay angry at one of its favorite and most useful toys. Krulm’venor might not be loyal or obedient, but he did have a knack for bringing new and interesting toys into the Lich’s possession, and the anguish that the godling felt over the desecration it had been forced to play a part in was utterly exquisite to behold.

After the Lich had killed the dwarvish avatar of the All-Father with Krulm’venor’s hands, devoured every last shadow, and shattered the ice that had restrained it while it devoured the darkness, the Lich had used the broken limbs of its enemies as paintbrushes to open a portal of shadows from Mournden to the depths of his own lair. Then it sent a small army of drudges in to loot that hallowed place until there was nothing left. It would never forget the way that the army of the dead poured into that distant place from so far away, grasping and clawing for every sacred dwarven relic that they could get their decaying fingers on.

The dwarves had thought that an infinite distance from the surface would grant their dead eternal peace. They’d been wrong.

It had felt Krulm’venor quailing in the back of its mind as The Lich dug up the bodies of heroes, their weapons, and stole the bones of ten thousand elder dwarves. It had taken only a few days, and in the end, when the temple was nothing more than a dark and empty room with nothing but a few profane bloodstains to hint at what had happened, the Lich relinquished control of the godling and left it there with the commandment to go ever deeper into the dark.

Krulm’venor would venture deeper and deeper still. Even the dwarves had no idea what to expect beyond a certain point, but the Lich hungered to better understand the element of earth and the creatures that dwelled within it. It was certain that past the layer of darkness, where there were no more souls to steal, it would find something even stranger that it could use. Maybe even something that could finally unlock the secrets aetheride.

The Lich still only had two anti-elements in the form of Stygium and cholerium, and it would need more information if it ever hoped to complete the equation and distill aetheride and strangulite. Sadly, without any spirits of those elements to study, the Lich had made little progress. It doubted it would have ever figured out the complex nature of the other two substances with power example, spirits of both elements to study, though. That made sense, though. You could only ever understand unlife by watching what happened to a human when it died, and everything inside it that existed to keep its heart beating slowly came to a stop.

The magic of the portal was only viable in two locations of perfect darkness, sadly, and even a hint of starlight without at least a dozen feet of bedrock to block out the irritating light would be enough to disrupt it. Still, it would be effective when it came time to confront the All-father and the cities that worshiped him directly. For now, that could wait, though, as the Lich focused on its inevitable showdown with the lord of light.

Tsson’vek had been growing used to his new body, too, though he was filled with nothing but hate and revulsion at the idea. The Lich’s instincts, in this case, had been correct: it needed the spirit of a hunter to occupy the fearsome body of the dragon, and since it had no powerful air spirits to chain to it the way it had melded its river dragon and swamp dragon together, the mind of a reptile hunter was the next best choice.

Of course, none of these minor projects were as important as the artifact it had focused most of its attention on for the last several months: its own body. Though the Lich generally saw no need for movement, it knew that when it came time to do battle with Siddrim, such things would be required in the same way that a mortal might don armor. The core of the Lich was a fragile mummified shell of a dead wizard, and it wouldn’t be able to stand up to an armed mortal, let alone an angry god. Its encounter with a shard of the All-Father had made that very clear.

Krulm’venor’s body had been built to take a surprising amount of abuse from the goblin souls that ran amuck inside it, and even so, two blows overflowing with divine might had been almost enough to shatter it. And those were just the physical attacks, the Lich reminded itself. Even worse than those hammer blows was the memory of the holy fire itself. It tried to burn away its steel fingers to nothing and would have succeeded, too, if the Lich hadn’t had an ocean of darkness to draw upon.

It had been a harrowing thing, but only a taste of the crucible that was now on the horizon. It was an inevitable conflict, of course. The Lich might have hidden away from it if it could, but it had already taken all of the lands and the souls that no one was likely to notice. Anything beyond the bounds it currently controlled would have to be fought for.

So, it wielded its fleshcrafters as one, and they all stopped what they were doing and turned to the special section of its mortuary that was set aside for the bones of holy men that it had dared not touch for so long. Men like Kaligos had taught it to fear the light, but now it would use them to snuff it out for all time.

The project the Lich envisioned was a complex one, all centered around the slowly beating heart of the Templar that he’d never let die. The man’s comrades might have burned the body and scattered the ashes, but they had no idea that the person they inflicted that torment on was still alive. It had been a delicious moment of accidental betrayal, and the Lich had feasted on it for days both during and after.

What it needed now, though, wasn’t betrayal but raw materials. A body built from ingredients enured to the light would be painful, but not so painful as being burned to dust in a conflagration of blinding incandescence. The Lich would happily wear an iron maiden into battle if it was enough to ensure victory.

So it would start with the heart of a hero and the bones of devout and holy men, and then it would layer those in steel and gold before covering the entire abomination in a layer of mithril armor. The result would be the mockery of the Templars that fought it at every turn, but that only added appeal for the Lich.

It would need more than a body and armor that could hold back the light, though. It would need a weapon capable of penetrating its opponent without being annihilated by the forces of creation too. That had been the most important lesson in its proxy duel with the All-Father. If the thing hadn’t foolishly attempted to use ghosts to fight a lord of death, then the Lich would have struggled to land a clean blow.

Even as its flesh crafters began to select the best bones for the task and bring them to the forges so they could be dipped in molten metal and then polished, the shape was already forming in its mind. It wasn’t the clumsy armored form it had seen so many times on the heroes that had tried to invade its swamp, though. No, this would take more inspiration from the exquisite efficiency of insects that made up its most numerous branch of followers. The Lich would give its body three legs and four arms so that it could better defend itself in the fight ahead.

Two eyes were likely too limiting as well, and it would have to decide how to cope with that after a few more experiments. Even the eyes would have to be tested lest it be blinded mid-dual. Even sapphires were likely too weak, so faceted onyx or obsidian would make a better choice. Of course, if it’s helmet had louvered blinders that it could manipulate to avoid the worst of it… The Lich’s mind trailed off as each improvement spawned ten more ideas, and each of those had iterative improvements of their own that might be implemented.

The Lich passed those ideas off to be further explored by its library. It might not need such a creation for years yet, and there was no need to rush things. The head could wait until the body had been built and battle-tested. It might only ever be needed for a single fight, but that was a fight that the Lich could not afford to lose.

Ch. 72 - True Form

It wasn’t until Todd had finally found the coven of cultists amongst the workers that he realized that his sight had somehow dulled in the last few months of being here. The workmen were from different regions and on various shifts. Still, following a hunch, he entered their camp late at night and found them worshiping a queer idol by firelight. He was, of course, outraged that these men were using their dirty hands to help build Brother Verdenin’s great work, but he was more baffled that he could barely detect any evil in their dull eyes and wicked hearts.

The next day when they reported for work, Todd had the guards arrest them. As much as he hated torture, he looked forward to putting them to the question so that they might tell him more about what other vipers lay in their midst. Priest Verdenin had other ideas, though, and ordered their execution almost immediately.

“But sir… I—” Todd protested.

“Silence,” Verdenin said in a voice filled with uncharacteristic authority. “These currs have tainted our holy site, and all of their work must be cleansed. They deserve no mercy.”

Though Todd largely agreed, he watched in disappointment as the guards carried out the priest’s order. He understood how personally the priest took this project, but he felt certain that they’d made a error here, but now he could do nothing to fix it.

Todd spent much of the rest of the day trying to understand why he hadn’t seen more darkness on them as he watched the river go by. There was less taint there than there had ever been, or at least that’s how it seemed. “Maybe I’m just going blind,” he said to himself as he sat there. Maybe the water was as toxic as ever, but he just couldn’t see it.

That was when he decided he had to fast and purify himself if he wanted any answers. It was only once that decision was made that he went back to the Temple of Dawn to consult with the priest where it was impossible not to notice how much the building was taking shape now. In the six months since they’d started work, a great deal had been done.

The floor was in place now, save for a few mosaics where the strange plumbing needed to be connected first, and the fountain basins were all assembled on the outside of the growing walls. When all of this was done, the round building would practically be surrounded by its own moat, and the spray of crystal waters would be constant. Todd still thought that those details were utter folly; he had to admit that it would be a sight.

The walls, too, were growing higher, and the effect of the vivid colors of sandstone was very striking, though perhaps a little darker than Brother Verdenin had intended. Though during the day, the waist-high walls looked like an especially vivid sunset, at dusk, it looked more like the sight of a bloody massacre to him. Only the central columns were complete now so that they could start to build the scaffolding for the dome, but in another year or two, the exterior would be complete, and not so long after that, the inside would be finished as well.

And all it would cost was a small fortune, he thought ruefully.

In the midst of the temple, in a tent that sat where the altar would eventually go, sat Brother Verdenin. For the last two months, it had slowly become his office, and these days it was rare for him to leave the site for more than a few minutes at a time. His work had become an obsession, and though Todd would have liked to believe that this was an act of sincere devotion, he secretly believed it was about vanity more than anything at this point.

When Todd said he wanted to take a leave of absence to commune with Siddrim, the priest practically insisted. He told him that he should take as long as he needed. Brother Verdenin blew off his concerns about his sight with general aphorisms about how “the powers and gifts of their Lord ebbed and flowed as needed, and near such a holy site, you obviously have no need for such things.”

Todd thought that answer was especially self-serving for a man with so much darkness in his heart, but right now, Todd could barely see it, so he was hardly one to judge. He also worried that the priest so obviously wanted him away from this spot, though he still had no good answer as to why. Neither of these things stopped Todd from gathering his meager possessions and taking a ferry across the river. There was a monastery only a three-day ride from here, and Todd would pray on those questions there after he’d been shriven and purified.

. . .

The order of St Thedocious was a penitent order, and they welcomed him. Though many of the brothers had taken vows of silence, the Abbot took the time to hear his confession and listen to his doubts.

“Many are the follies of the holy city,” he agreed after Todd finished explaining the extravagant nature of the new temple and his misgivings about it. The Abbott did not elaborate further but put Todd to work weeding vegetable beds and sheering sheep. It was pointless, menial labor, but Todd found it infinitely more satisfying than anything he’d done in Blackwater. The old brick building of the monastery would never hold a candle to the Temple of Sunset, of course, but that didn’t matter. There was a holiness coming from its whitewashed exterior that no amount of gilding could ever hope to improve upon.

Every day he worked hard, and every day he prayed for guidance, and slowly but surely, his senses began to sharpen and improve again. As soon as he noticed that he could see the holy light radiating from the Abott, he was tempted to go right back to the Blackwater and test his vision, but he forced himself to wait. He’d told Brother Verdenin that he would be gone for a full moon, and he aimed to do just that.

So, day by day, he cleansed himself of whatever the taint was that clung to him during his time at Blackwater. These purges took the form of a series of bouts with an illness and increasingly strange dreams. Though he still worked in the fields with a fever, only prayer kept the sickness at bay. Between the vomiting and the sweating, it was as if his body was trying to remove some terrible poison.

Eventually, after three weeks of suffering, the Abbott decided that he had been purified, and any further labors would only exacerbate his worsening condition. “There was a shadow on you when you arrived, acolyte, but you have purged it. Now you must rest your body lest the Siddrim take you before it is time.”

“It’s fine,” Todd insisted, “I can do more. I must do…”

As he stood to make his point, he very nearly collapsed. The Abbot said nothing beyond a knowing smile when Todd added, “Well, perhaps I should rest more.”

Ultimately Todd bowed to the older man’s wisdom and rested for two full days before he made his long journey back. Though he hadn’t enjoyed being treated like a child at the time, eventually, he was grateful that the man had stopped him because his rising fever made it quite apparent that he might not have survived another week of hard work like this. Neither healing magic nor bleeding had done much good, though sometimes that was the way with sickness. A wound was easy to heal with Siddrim’s light, even if Todd wasn’t particularly talented there, but sickness - well, that could indicate deeper problems in the body.

Two days from the monastery and more than a day from the river, he began to hallucinate. If he was well, he would have been sure that the sight was showing him how evil and twisted the world around him had become, but because he’d just ridden this way only a month ago, he knew that was impossible. There was no way that the trees had turned to bone or that the shadows danced at the signposts and crossroads. For that many unquiet dead to exist in this area, there would have to be untold numbers of mass graves, which simply wasn’t possible.

His mind would play tricks on him at random, and that was most noticeable when he passed groups of people on the road back to Blackwater. Some of the men he passed would look perfectly normal, and a few even flicker with the light of a life well lived, but others were stained so black by evil or were so withered by sin that they looked as grey as the zombies he’d fought not long ago. In one case, Todd almost pulled his sword from his sheath to run someone through, but when he blinked and shook his head, he could see that it was not a gang of monsters but a man and his family. That moment terrified him, and he prayed for forgiveness that night before he drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

The next day he reached the river, but he knew it was coming long before he arrived. He could see the beam of light from the heavens illuminating the area around the Temple of Dawn in pinks and reds, which were a stark contrast to the grey and beige that the rest of the world had become. Todd was so weak and feverish at this point that he was having trouble staying on his steed and clung weakly to its neck while he gazed off at the horizon.

Where the shaft of light met the earth sat the walls of the temple, and there, the ground was so red it looked like a bloody war had been fought in his absence. He stared at that spot, and for a moment, he glimpsed something truly terrifying. Though the light radiated up into the heavens and across the plains holding back the evil of this fallen world, the darkness beneath the temple only festered and grew, and the light merely contrasted against it to make the darkness even darker. For a moment, Todd thought he could see something in that darkness. A dark, dread master pulling strings from the depths of its bit… Then he fell off his saddle, vomiting blood.

Todd lay there until nightfall, certain he was dying, with a trader found him and rushed him across to Blackwater. Todd was only awake intermittently during all this, but he was as weak as an infant. During the short ride and ferry trip before he was rushed to Brother Verdinen, Todd tried to warn them about what he had seen, but he lacked the words to announce his fears properly. Instead, he just babbled while the priest sought to heal him with the power of herbs and magic.

The whole time he did, though, Todd could only see a monster wearing the priest’s skin. He tried to pull away from his treatments as one vile concoction after another was forced down his throat, but between the leaches and the fever, he lacked the strength to do so. Todd imagined that he could see the one-armed priest as a man with two arms. That was impossible, of course, especially considering that one of the arms was made of pure shadow and confiscated with a poisonous violet sheen. While he was standing at the death’s door, he saw many strange things.

Brother Verdinen was by his side for days, “Don’t die on us, Todd, that’s an order!” the priest said at one moment when Todd was at his weakest. Todd would have felt better about such a statement if it hadn’t been said by someone with a dark, almost hungry look in their eyes.

Ch. 73 - Anointed

The next few weeks were among the worst of Todd’s life as he tossed and turned feverishly in his sick bed. Sometimes he felt like he was receiving divine wisdom in the strange things he saw, and other times he was sure he was going quite mad as his mind turned inside out. One day he was being taken care of by a demon in the guise of a man, and then next, it was by the priest he’d once nursed back to health in a similar way. Todd didn’t know what to believe, but he was in no shape to take any action, regardless.

When he was through the worst of it, Todd could no longer remember half of the things he’d seen nor most of what he’d said. They were the ravings of a mad man though, of that he was certain, and he’d said things worth being ashamed of. He knew that he’d condemned everyone for being tainted by the darkness, though, from the priest down to the doctor that treated him and the washerwoman that took care of him while the priest was busy elsewhere.

It was only when his fever went down that the world started to return to normal. Instead of seeing everything as radiating light and darkness, the world slowly returned to the relative normalcy he’d seen for so long: A little darkness clung to most of the residents of Blackwater, along with the river and the priest, but it was nothing like the apocalyptic vision’s he’d seen when he was on death’s door, and he regretted his accusations.

Even though he had large gaps in his memories, a few images still haunted his dreams. He remembered the dread black hand of the priest extending from his stump like a creature that was made of shadows that lived inside the holy man and only crawled out when no one was looking. He also remembered the Temple of Dawn bleeding from its walls as the infinite darkness extended beneath it. He had no idea what to make of those things, but they filled his nightmares for the next few months while he recovered.

He took it easy for a long time, letting even his practice slip as he focused on getting better, and even after his deathly pallor lessened, he still spent most days in the shade, watching the construction while he looked for details that might give him insight into why something still felt so wrong.

It was during this time, too, that he realized that the town had grown into a small city in its own right. For months Todd had been so focused on rooting out imagined evils that he’d still pictured Blackwater as the town he’d first visited over a year ago with Brother Farbaer. It was so much more than that now. For every brothel or shrine to the Oroza that they’d destroyed between now and then, five new artisan workshops had sprung up. Of course, each of those provided Brother Verdenin with the complicated fixtures and decorations that were needed for every stage of construction, and of course, for every new group of artisans, another bakery or bathhouse opened up to accommodate the needs of so many wealthy clients. Todd couldn’t walk down Brackenwald Street on the way to his boarding house each night without tripping over a barber or a bookseller.

“It’s amazing how much growth happens just by spreading a little gold around,” had muttered in surprise one day when he’d watched a fancy carriage rattle over the brick streets for the first time, unsure of who it belonged to.

“Gold is the seed corn of civilization,” Brother Verdenin said smoothly like he was reciting a proverb. “Every spring, the farmer plants a crop and watches it multiply, and every fall, he saves part of that miracle to do the same the following year. Cities are grown in much the same way, and we will harvest their souls. For Siddrim, of course.”

That last part sounded almost like an afterthought, and Todd thought that it was just one more sign of the priest’s growing hubris, but he thought about it for days afterward for reasons he couldn’t quite say, even after Brother Verdenin had mentioned that an important visitor would be arriving soon. If one wasn’t harvesting souls for Siddrim after all, who would they be harvesting them for?

Even though he still hadn’t completely recovered from recent events, a few days after Todd celebrated his nineteenth name day, he was anointed and finally became a full-fledged Brother of the Light. This wasn’t because of any achievement of his own, though. Sadly, it was because the Archbishop that was visiting Blackwater to check on the Temple of Dawn’s progress wanted to conduct a ceremony worth recording for the sake of bragging rights.

“Henceforth, my boy, you shall be known as Brother Graff, and when the history of written of this beautiful place, it will say that Archbishop Dobriven was the first one to invoke the divine here on your behalf. Isn’t that exciting?” the portly man asked as if that was supposed to mean something. “You’ll forever be a part of this place!”

That Brother Faerbar hadn’t been here made the whole thing almost meaningless in Todd’s eyes, but the quality of the priest that had recited the words had somehow managed to make them completely worthless. It didn’t matter what he said to men such as this. He didn’t need his sight to see the corruption blossoming off of him.

The Archbishop was a lifelong ladder climber in the holy city. He was so banal that he made Brother Verdenin look contrite and humble by comparison, which was a hard thing to do, Todd thought wryly.

In the end, Todd felt no different, and even though he thought he might feel cleaner or lighter once he’d finally achieved the ranks of the elect. He was still the same old Todd, though, just with a little fragrant oil smeared on his forehead.

Still, he’d obeyed because that was the place of a warrior of light, but he hadn’t been happy about it, not about escorting the two of them around the room as the Priest and Archbishop discussed the motif for the stained glass windows, which were still half a year from installation.

“You think that Saint Etroven’s temptation would be best here?” The Archbishop asked skeptically. “He’s a bit of an odd choice. Why not Saint Frank or the sisters of Karavar?”

“Well, - that’s easy,” Priest Verdinen said with a smile. “Because his temptation was said to start at sunset and last all through the night. What better symmetry of symbolism could you ask for?”

They both laughed at that, but Todd stood there quietly. He didn’t know all of the stories that the two of them discussed that afternoon as he stood there in his polished armor as an unnecessary honor guard, but he did know that one. It was an evil, libidinous tale, and though the moral was restraint and resistance, he had no idea why Brother Verdenin thought that was an appropriate tale to plaster on the front of his masterpiece.

The question was answered that evening, at least in part when Todd was summoned the Brother Verdenin’s tent. It was funny to Todd that the priest still slept in such a place given that the forms that would support the building of the dome made the whole thing more of a house than many of the buildings in town, but habits were habits, he supposed.

“The Archbishop asked if you will be returning with him to Siddrimar, you know, Brother Graff.” Brother Verdenin said casually, feeling him out. “I’m inclined to agree. You could finally be reunited with your old Master, but this time as an equal.”

Todd’s last name still sounded foreign to his ears. He’d been called toad, Todd, acolyte, or squire for so long that it was practically another language.

“I thought he might,” Todd answered cryptically, “But just the same, I would prefer to stay here. At least until this Temple is complete.”

“You would?” the priest asked, folding up his papers as he looked at Todd directly. “I would have thought that you’d want to go back to the light as soon as possible, so you could use your strength to fight against the darkness where you are most needed.”

Todd gritted his teeth, annoyed by how transparently the older man was trying to manipulate him. Brother Verdenin might address him with the title of an equal, but it was clear that the priest still thought of Todd as a child and someone to be kept away from whatever secrets he was still keeping about this project.

“As much as I’d love to fight the dark elsewhere, I have to see this project complete as I’ve sword I would,” Todd answered curtly. “No one can release me from a vow like that once sworn. Still, it shouldn’t be too much longer, right? Another year? Two?”

“Closer to two,” Brother Verdenin sighed. “If you’ve made up your mind, I won’t force you, but I think you’d be happier if you were back fighting alongside the rest of your cadre.”

“Thank you,” Todd said currently before leaving.

The exchange only further reaffirmed for him that there was still something here. Though Todd might owe the priest for saving his life when he’d returned to Blackwater a few months ago on death’s door, that didn’t mean he was going to turn a blind eye to whatever Brother Verdenin was trying to accomplish here.

It was unnatural, and Todd would sniff it out; somehow, he swore to himself with frustration. All he ended up with for his efforts, though, were sleepless nights as he stalked among the construction site looking for miscreants and jumping at shadows.

He never found anything, though, except for the growing collection of statues that were populating the shrines and fountains. On this, at least, he thought that Brother Verdenin was doing some good. Some of them were so realistic that it was like they were people trapped under layers of plaster, stone, and gold.

That was impossible, of course, but still, the effect was startling. Those works of art were lovelier than any of the marble statues he’d seen in Siddrimar. They could look disturbing by the flickering light of a torch, but by the light of day, those same expressions were almost beatific.

In the end, Todd was forced to conclude that perhaps the priest’s sins were limited to the merely mundane. Perhaps he acted so strangely because he was embezzling some small part of his enormous funds for his own gain when all this was done. After all, if one gone in twenty or thirty went missing during such a costly project, who would know?

Todd was even less interested in those sorts of crimes than he was in the games of status that determined rank in Siddrimar’s pecking order, and he had no interest in going through the man’s account books to try to catch him in a lie. In the end, despite his ardent desire to stay here and unwind some grand conspiracy, he was forced to conclude that he was the one that had clearly been imagining things, and spent more and more time to the west of Blackwater hunting down goblins small goblin dens and destroying them.

That, at least, was satisfying work, and though he earned himself a few new scars over the months that followed, he never did manage to shake the feeling that he’d missed something, and though he wrote several letters to Brother Faerbar in that time, he was never able to share anything beyond progress reports because Todd’s doubts were far too flimsy for the light of day.

Ch. 74 - Heart of Darkness

Krulm’venor was a wretched, broken thing in mind, body, and soul. He’d stood up to the Lich that held his leash for as long as he could, but after the last abomination, he was empty. His ribs were cracked, his pelvis was bent, and he walked with a perpetual limp that didn’t hurt, though the endless echoing sounds of his step-drag, step-drag gate did eventually start to grate on him.

That annoying, repetitive sound was a sweet melody compared to the sound of the goblins running rampant in his head. They hadn’t stopped their incessant screaming and whispering, and there were times when Krulm’venor bellowed in rage just to shut them out for a few seconds.

“Where are we going?” one hissed.

“When will we get there?” another one rasped.

Then they would argue and rage about how close they were to whatever was next and when they would next be able to rip something limb from limb. There were times when they discussed more visceral topics like that, that his hands would twitch, and he found himself throttling the neck of something that didn’t exist.

He’d long since lost control of his mind, but day by day, and trauma by trauma, Krulm’venor was losing control of his mind as well.

That it hadn’t even punished him for trying to warn his people galled him more than anything. The Lich never forgot to punish the disobedient. That it hadn’t bothered to do so yet meant only that it was biding its time and letting that axe hang above Krulm’venor’s neck for as long as the undead monster wished.

He still walked though, ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, because he had no say in the matter anymore. He was deep in the eternal deadzone where nothing with a soul could survive for long against the vast darkness that dwelled there. He might have been deeper than any dwarf had gone before, but he took no pride in it. For all he knew this was his punishment: to walk forever into the darkness until he stopped existing.

“Feed us or we will feast on you instead,” a voice repeated over and over frantically in his mind, but he swated it away.

Schools of the empty swarmed around him sometimes, and occasionally large things moving in the darkness like unseen leviathens, but in both cases the Lich would assume control and devour them with Krulm’venor’s mouth before leaving him to wander again. After a time the denizens of this strange world learned to steer clear of the pale blue light that accompanied him as he wandered deeper into the cold dark tunnels.

Truthfully, he didn’t expect to ever find anything again. He expected that he would just limp for an eternity, gnashing his teeth at the idea of what the monster that own him must be doing to the sacred dwarven dead. Then he saw the glow.

Krulm’venor was miles underground, and knew for certain that there should be neither light nor life here, and yet, there, far in the distance of the titanic cavern he’d found, was a speck of light. He found it strange, but he didn’t let his shock stop him. The only thing that would await him for stopping without reason was pain.

The light turned out to be a luminous fungus that glowed white blue. It was incredibly faint, but in the absolute darkness he’d just endured for weeks or months it might as well have been a beacon fire. First it was only here and there in small patches, but eventually the whole tunnel was full of the stuff, pushing back against the dark, and preventing the shadows from passing this way, he realized.

For the first time in a long time that raised the specter that he wasn’t alone, though he had no idea what could possibly live this deep. Though he didn’t discover what was down here, he did see movement several times amongst the rocks and stalamites of the tunnels he explored, but he could never quite see what it was. Slowly Krulm’venor grew certain that he wasn’t alone down here; that’s when he discovered a sign.

“What is this language?” the Lich whispered in his head.

“Yessss… tell us. Read it. Read it!” a voice in his mind sprang up, to repeat the Lich’s order.;

Krulm’venor could not give either of them a good answer though. “It looks vaguely like dwarvish,” Krulm’venor said hesitantly, though, that could have just been because it was carven into stone, or that he was losing his mind. “It’s not though. Too many curves. Too many spirals. Each of these is almost a dwarven letter but they don’t add up to form any words.”

“If you cannot read it, then find me who wrote it!” the Lich commanded, and then it was gone again, Leave Krulm’venor alone to wonder what he was supposed to do next.

Though the sign was unreadable, it had two vaguely arrow like shapes pointing two different ways at the fork in the road where he now stood, so he went left, following the path of the larger word. The result was more walking down dimly lit corridors. Though sometimes the color of the moss would shift from icy blue to an almost white or an aqua color, the intensity of dull, uniform light never changed, lending the entire place an air of sureality.

“Why should there be so much light down this far,” he grumbled to himself.

“So we can find our prey,” a goblin hissed.

“Yes, find it, kill it!” more screamed. Krulm’venor was horrified to find that he’d mouthed those words, but before he could react to that, he noticed a small movement in one of the stones upahead. The sounds he’d made had started something, but he was quite sure the stone had moved not something behind it.

Krulm’venor approached the small stalagmite near the left wall of the winding tunnel, and when he got within a few feet, it took off running. It wasn’t a stone at all, but a tiny little person, dressed as one.

With all the bloodlust in his system, Krulm’venor couldn’t help but give chase like a hungry predator.

His body couldn’t hope to keep up though. Not with his foot dragging, so, grudgingly he bent forward and starting scrambling on all fours after the thing in giant, lopping strides as his twisted from ate the ground. The Lich had always designed this skeleton with the proportions of goblins in mind, so it’s arms were a bit too long, and its lets were a bit too short to be comfortable for a dwarf, the result was something perfectly suited to the monster he was slowly becoming as the goblins muddied his once clear mind, and made him third for the blood of his tiny little prey.

Even running as fast as he was, Krulm’venor did not catch the tiny little dwarf-like creature until after it had reached a small hidden passage in the stone and sealed it behind it. The fire god was not about to let it get away though, and the secret door only intrigued the Lich that was now watching him all the more.

Krulm’venor pried the door open with his steel fingers, and shattered the small entrance. He then pounded against the walls to widden it slightly, before he crawled through the gap. What he saw next would have taken his breath away, if he still had lungs to breath.

The strange cavern was a tiny little world, with fields and houses. There were even fields, and a fortress that the inhabitants were streaming toward, and it was all lit up by a large clowning crystal, mounted in the ceiling. The whole cavern had been molded into a tiny work of art, and the stone had been bent and melded with magic to create flowing, organic shape which the small parts of his mind that were still wholly dwarven found beautiful in their simplity. The rest of him simply wanted to destory it all.

The strange little things which he’d decided were almost certainly gnomes, were screaming as they ran. The dwarves had legends of the tiny creatures, but Krulm’venor had never seen any evidence that they were real, in life or death. He’d assumed that they’d existed at some point before the goblins had hunted them to extinction, but somehow, a few of them at least had jounreyed so deep into the depths that no one could ever find them or hurt them.

Most of them were running anyway. Some were on the walls of their completely ineffective fortress that were a little taller than he was, readying their tiny little ballistas while he stomped through their tiny little world. Some of the small things were charging toward him too with weapons not much longer than his fingers. Their bravery didn’t last long though, and all of them died within seconds without him even having to resort to flames as he crushed their little bodies in an orgy of bloody violence.

They wouldn’t have stood a chance against him at all, unless they’d unleashed their golem. Well - maybe it wasn’t a golem, he thought as the creature began to congeal from the debris in front of him. One second he was tearing down the curtin wall of the tiny fortress with his bare hands, and then next all the shattered stone and the bodies of the gnomeish dead were congealing into a giant man shaped thing that was almost as large as he was.

Krulm’venor rose to his full height, and looked at it, unsure of what was going to happen next, when it suddenly lashed out with a solid upper cut that lifted his several hundred pound body of steel and bone off the ground and sent him sprawling. It hadn’t hit him quite as hard as the All-Father’s avatar had, but it hard enough to hurt, and Krulm’venor rolled out of the way before the thing could stomp him.

He was fighting like a filthy goblin now he realized, scrambling to his hands and feet as he manuvered out of the way. Their battle carried on across the cavern, and everywhere they went they left wreckage and death in their wake as the two foot tall inhabitants tried to find shelter. There was none though. Not once Krulm’velor started to breathe fire.

It did less than nothing to the golem or the elemental or whatever it was, but it seemed to pain the thing to watch the gnomes die, and fire reached into the tiny nooks and crannies they were hiding in quite well.

As the fight went on, the thing congealed from a thousand tiny rocks, into a single creature made of a single slab of stone, and it got stronger as that happened.

“Fascinating,” the Lich whispered.

“Murder! Death! Fire!” the goblins screamed.

Krulm’venor didn’t listen to either of those voices though. All he did was try to shatter its opponent. For several minutes that was a fruitless endevor, but finally it struck some weak spit in the things exterior and it cracked like an egg, creating a long thin rift that revealed the hollow, geode like interior of the thing.

After that weakness was exposed, Krulm’venor dodged the thing’s blows, getting in close and grappling with the thing until he could pull it apart at the seams. Even if his mind was no longer truely dwarven, he understood how the weak spots effected even the most complex creation, and now that he had an opening, the creature soon splintered into a hundred pieces, and all that was left was the thing’s head in its hand.

Krulm’venor looked around at the holocaust it had created. Everything was death and smoke, which it gloried in enough for the goblins that burrowed into its mind to finally be still for a while.  Only then did the fire spirit move to crush the quietly whimpering thing in his hands to dust, but the Lich stayed his hands.

“No you fool,” it shouted. “Carry that back to Mourden and I shall bring you home. Be careful not to let it touch stone the whole way, lest the earth spirits trapped inside of it escape! If you fail me in this I will make your next body out of goblin shit. You’ll need one since you’ve ruined the one I built especially for you.”

Ch. 75 - A One Armed Priest

As he made his way down the mountains that spring, Paulus gave the city he once lived in a wide berth. He hadn’t skipped Fallravea because he feared that he’d be recognized but because he could see from a great distance that the place was even more fouled than the waters of the Oroza itself even after the Templar’s supposed purges.

It didn’t matter to him that he still had bags of gold and silver coins tucked away there, in places that were unlikely to ever be found. That wealth was nothing but bait for a trap as far as he was concerned. It was impossible for such things to stay pure in the face of so much death. Instead of marching through that cursed town, he journeyed from hamlet to village as he slowly worked his way around it before continuing south.

“They said the place had been purged, but I told Sister Annise that was no longer possible,” he muttered to himself as he went. “If she’d just read the figures and done the math herself, she would have seen that!”

His trip had not been comfortable, but his life at the small temple he’d stayed at for the last half year had hardly been better. Now that his health had improved enough that he could sleep in a barn without being taken by a fever, he needed to move on. There was so much to do but so little time left for him to do it.

“Doom is coming for us,” he muttered.

He muttered that all the time now, often without realizing it. It was one of the reasons Priest Mallen had encouraged him to leave so vociferously of late. Well - that and the priest was jealous of Paulus’s exalted rank.

He might wear the simple brown robes of a penitent, but that was just a disguise. He knew that as thanks for all his efforts, Siddrim had made him a secret high priest of his flock. The Lord of Light had told him so in a vision the night he’d lost his arm. Though it would never be common knowledge, it was an honor he’d been forced to accept, even if his health was no longer the best.

Despite his elevated rank, Paulus didn’t let things go to his head. He carried nothing with him on this trek but a walking stick which he leaned on heavily, and a begging bowl which he used to share the wealth of the land with the generous people who worked it.

Despite the hard times, the people were generous. Paulus had yet to go hungry. Instead, he’d blessed infants, healed the sick with his one good hand, and feasted on the finest leftover food as he made his long slow journey south.

He was going to the one place where a tragedy of unimaginable proportions might be stopped: Blackwater. It was an inauspicious name for a place where he hoped to save the world. It sounded more like the place where river pirates might spend their time between raids or where lizardmen might lie in wait to ambush unwary travelers, but all his notes had pointed to this critical crossroads, and if nothing was done, he feared that was where the world would soon end.

“My poor books,” he sighed. “They must be so lonely without me.”

He’d left them in Sister Annise’s care, but only because Paulus knew that if he left them with the priest, they would be burned as heresy.

“Not heresy,” Paulus had corrected the other men of the temple regularly, “Historic. This is why Siddrim saved me, to help you understand how the calamity about to befall the world might yet be avoided!”

No matter how many times Paulus had explained it to them, no one had ever been convinced enough to join him on his quest, so he would do it himself. Well, he would find the one who must do it himself, he corrected himself mentally. Even in his prime, Paulus had not been a fighter. He’d wielded toughs and secrets like a lesser man might wield a sword.

This time he wasn’t going to have to pay anyone, though, because Siddrim was a generous God and had given him a champion. He just needed to find the lad. From the sketch he’d made, the boy wouldn’t properly be called a boy anymore, but he still had a childish, virtuous heart. More importantly, he had a strong sword arm, and if someone like Paulus could succeed in removing the blindfold that had been tied around his bright hazel eyes, then they might yet avert the catastrophe that Paulus had seen so many times in his sleep.

He tried not to think about it, but the very word ‘catastrophe’ brought terrible images to his mind. A bleeding sun. Temples on fire. Monstrosities boiling out from the depths, and corpses rising from their own graves. It might have been the end of the world, but Paulus was going to stop it from ever happening. He had to because no one else was going to.

So, day after day, he continued south, and eventually, he found the fabled city itself. Well - it wasn’t really a city - not like Fallravea. It was a large town on the verge of becoming something more, but it lacked the taint that the hoary old city he’d grown up in always had. There were newer buildings along the waterfront, but even so, most of the town seemed to be made of hastily built shacks.

It didn’t even have walls or a gate, he scoffed as he slowly approached the one small watch tower that passed for security in the backwater.

“I’m looking for the chosen one,” Paulus said to the first guard he laid eyes on. “Do you know where I can find him?”

“Ummm… I don’t know who you mean, sir. If you could be more specific…” the young man with a spear answered nervously.

“Well, he’s about your height,” Paulus sighed. “He’s either fair-haired or has hair the color of dun. He might have a secret birthmark, and he’s a holy warrior whose mother was born on an auspicious day that was strongly in tune with the element of air. He has—”

“If you’re looking for a holy warrior, there’s only one in these parts that I know of,” the guard said, cutting Paulus off just when he was getting going. “His name is Brother Graff, and you might be able to find him at the temple.”

“Might? Might?!” Paulus shouted, annoyed that he’d been interrupted when he had so much more to say on the subject. “And if he’s not, what then? I’m on urgent business for the temple, and the fate of the very world hangs in the balance, and the best you can do for me is might…”

Paulus would have continued that rant a good deal longer as well, but this time it was coughing that laid him low, and he spent the next minute hacking up a lung. That could happen sometimes when he got too excited.

“I suppose I could send a messenger around to find him for you if you like, sir, since it’s temple business…” the guard answered uncertainly as he looked at Paulus like he was about to keel over at any moment.

“You do that, boy,” the old man said, patting him on the shoulder. “You do that. I’ll be at the temple. I’m eager to see what you all have been building so hard down here.”

He took the last leg of his long trip extra slowly while he recovered, which gave him a chance to appreciate the squat domed building as he slowly approached it. Though it was still obscured by a great deal of scaffolding, its sunset-colored walls and its gold dome were impossible to miss.

“It’s okay,” he said to himself with disappointment. From the way people had been going on about this magnificent work of art, he’d honestly expected more. Honestly, the whole thing had a strange aura about it he couldn’t quite put his finger on, at least not until he got inside and noticed the way the gazes of the statues lined up and he’d cross-referenced them by the number of pillars and the contours of the light beams. This place was cursed.

“Can I help you,” a man said, walking up to him as he stood there, taking in all the strange new information that was pouring into his brain.

Paulus spared the new voice a glance and was surprised to see another holy man addressing him. “Well, look at that,” he mused, “another one-armed priest. We find a couple more, and we can have ourselves a convocation.”

“Very amusing,” the stranger said, gesturing widely with his sole hand. “I’m Brother Verdenin, the priest of this temple; how may I address you, sir?”

“I am the secret grand high priest of the Order of the Ever Present Watchers, but you may address me as Paulus on account of our shared disfigurement,” Paulus said glibly, returning his gaze to the walls as he started to notice something odd.

“The Order of the Ever Present Watchers?” Brother Verdenin asked. “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of such a thing. Do you—”

“Oh, I see now,” Paulus interrupted as his eyes widened in horror. “This is where it will begin. I see the blood on the walls and the fire from the sky—”

“Leave us,” Brother Verdenin ordered the few craftsmen in the room. They’d stopped working anyway, so their absence would be no loss. “I will handle this. My poor brother has just lost his way. There’s no blood here, Brother, only beautiful pink stones and brilliant red glass to light the way to those who still dwell in the dark.”

“Blood,” Paulus insisted, pointing around the room. Everywhere he looked, he saw blood. It was on the stones that made the walls, the pillars that held up the ceiling, and it was even on the gilded decorations.

Paulus walked over to where the men had been getting ready to hang an angelic figure from the wall near the door and looked at it as blood started to seep out from under the plaster and the gilding. That was when he finally understood.

“Oh - these have bodies inside them to perfect their forms, don’t they? They have— Acchhhkkk…” As Paulus spoke, wheeling about the room and looking at the terrible depravity of the place they were in, the other priest suddenly attacked him, wrapping both his hands around Paulus’ neck.

Both hands? Paulus asked, struck by the strange thought, even in this moment of peril. He momentarily stopped his struggles even as the life was being wrung from him to stare at the other priest’s newly grown arm. It was an abomination made entirely of shadow, and Paulus knew if he could just drag the other man a few feet into the light streaming down from the oculus, it would vanish like morning dew.

He couldn’t, though. He was too weak and getting weaker with every passing second. His salvation lay only a few feet away, but it might as well have been waiting for him in the temple with his papers and Sister Annise.

“Why,” Paulus gasped with his final breath. “We both serve the light…”

“My master has plans for you and your devious mind,” Brother Verdenin answered without malice or regret. It was the last thing that Paulus ever saw before the lights went out for good.

. . .

It was only a few minutes later after the priest dragged the lifeless body of the madman from where it lay in the shadow of the pillar that Brother Verdenin had pinned him against into the pavilion he used as his personal chambers, that Brother Graff showed up. His spiritual arm had faded only seconds before the other man had entered the room, and Priest Verdenin was grateful for that. Such a thing would have been even more impossible to explain than the body.

Todd didn’t say anything at first. He just looked around the room expectantly before he asked.

“Is there… was there someone here waiting for me?” he asked sheepishly?

“Should there be?” the priest asked, feigning disinterest.

“Well, a messenger from the city guard came to me while I was studying the scriptures at the book seller’s and told me that a… a one-armed priest wished to speak with me,” Todd said, trying and failing not to look at Brother Verdenin’s missing arm.

“Do you know any other one-armed priests?” Brother Verdenin said with a laugh.

“Well, no, but the messenger described someone older and said—” Todd started to answer.

“He was almost certainly confused,” Brother Verdenin said, letting his tent flap fall into place behind him. “I was the one who sent for you.”

“Oh, okay,” Todd agreed uncertainly, “What is it you need?”

“A number of tools have gone missing from the stone mason’s tents, and I fear there might be something darker at foot,” the priest lied. “As you know - We are only weeks away from holding our first service, and it would be a shame if that were disrupted because we weren’t vigilant enough.”

“I won’t let that happen, sir,” Todd said, saluting before he rushed off to find the culprits that existed only in his imagination.

That wasn’t unusual. Brother Graff had spent the better part of the last two years chgasing ghosts, Brother Verdenin thought with a smile. The man was hopeless. He couldn’t even find a dead body a few feet from the corpse itself. Of course, all of the terrible medicines he’d given the lad while he was dying from his terrible withdrawal symptoms had muted any supernatural gifts he might have once possessed.

“I don’t know why I have to let him live,” the priest muttered to himself as he went inside to hide the body a little better. “But the lord works in mysterious ways, and if he says that Todd is needed, then who am I to second guess such things.”

Brother Verdenin doubted that Todd would come into his tent, but regardless, It wouldn’t do for him to find the corpse of the raving lunatic to be found so close to the completion of the temple. That would raise too many questions that would be impossible to answer, and the priest was sure that sometime tonight, it would simply disappear all on its own anyway.