Tenebroum PLUS Ch. 91-92 (Patreon)

Two chapters for everyone! Forever! (hopefully)

Ch. 91 - Safe Harbor

Tagel-by-the-sea was burning on the horizon well before they reached it, creating a macabre lighthouse of sorts. Even though that was the case, they were still going to have to stop, however briefly, to try to find something to eat and drink. Normally, the biggest city in the county of Lidvell being put to the torch would normally be considered an unmitigated disaster, but as the sun had not risen in two or three days now, and the winds were growing so cold that at the time, he had frost in his beard, it ranked low on the list of problems.

Despite the heavy use of his boat’s tiny sail, Markez was exhausted from rowing for so long, and the boys who had been helping both had their hands covered in blisters. They were the lucky ones, though. The girls and the infant had spent almost a full day crying before they’d finally run out of tears. Now, they simply sat despondently and shivered under the damp fishing net they used for a blanket and looked at the stars while their mother prayed to Gods that no longer seemed to be listening.

Water, food, and hope were all bigger problems than danger. He might not starve to death this week, of course, but after another day or two of this, he’d run out of strength to row, and another few days after that, the children would start to die. Brannon’s wife honestly didn’t look too much better than them. She just stared blank-eyed into the dark as she whispered to anyone who would listen to save them.

So far, only Lunara had responded. It was only by the rise of the moon that he’d kept track of the number of days that had passed or the direction that she was going in. Her light was not enough to ward away the cold or give them any new information about the world beyond the fact that land was still off to his right as a patch of looming darkness differentiated from the sea only by the fact that it held its shape.

As they got closer to the burning city, Markez could smell death as well as smoke. That wasn’t surprising. What was was that some of the dead seemed to be moving. Originally, he’d feared goblins had attacked here just like they had on the strand, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Instead, the living dead could be seen fighting against the last of the city’s inhabitants, even as they continued to burn.

Maybe it really was the end of the world, he thought to himself, careful not to say that part out loud. Markez was old, and he was tired, but everyone was looking to him, women, children, everyone - and all he could do was try to keep them safe while everything burned down.

Trying up to those docks definitely wouldn’t be a safe thing to do, though, so as quietly as possible, they stayed a couple dozen feet away from land and pier as they slowly examined the grisly scene. Here, at least, the darkness was on their side. There were lots of debris and pieces of other boats in the water, but nothing seemed to be living out here, and if there was, he didn’t know how they could reach him.

As far as Markez knew, there was no such thing as a zombie that could swim, and though evil things had been said over the years about the Oroza, they weren’t exactly in her devilish waters yet. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what he would do when that happened, but it wasn’t something he had room to worry about just now while he worried about the dead milling about on shore.

It was only when they were halfway around the city that he saw a glimmer of hope in the form of a ship drifting free a few hundred yards off the coast. It wasn’t a little fishing raft either. Instead, it was a single-masted trading vessel that looked to be abandoned based on the way its rigging was scattered and its sail hung limply.

A vessel like that would have fresh water. He was sure of it. It might even have some food tucked away. Even as Markez’s mouth began to water at the idea of stale ship’s biscuits, he cursed and reminded himself that there could just as easily be a hold full of dead down there, too.

“W-Where are we going?” Karina rasped unexpectedly as he started to move away from the shore, scaring the shit out of him. “I thought we—”

“Shhhhh…” he shushed her, wanting to avoid attracting any attention as a note of hysteria started to creep into her voice. She was desperate. He knew that. They all were. “We’ll get you… I’ll take care of all of you, soo, I promise, but there ain’t no way anyone is going it that city and coming back alive, so we’ll have to nibble around the outside, and right now, I mean to take a long look in that cargo hold there.”

Given how tired they all were, it took some time to row against the waves to where the ship was drifting. Still, as he got closer, he saw no blood splatter on the decks and no bodies strewn about. It looked like it had come loose of its moorings and just drifted away. The name on the side was Dawn’s Light, which was almost certainly an omen, though he had no idea if it was a positive or a negative one, given the current state of things.

“You boys push off once I’m up,” Markez said as he brought them aside as quietly as he could. “I’m going to take a quick peek, and if I find any trouble, I’ll just jump right off and swim out to you.”

He very much doubted things would work out quite so neatly, but he wasn’t about to worry boys too young to shave about such things. Instead, he smiled and climbed over the railing of the vessel, and as soon as he was on his feet, he pulled out a belaying pin and held in like a club.

Rope was literally everywhere, and other than one suspicious blood spot near the sternhouse, he saw no signs of violence. The top deck was mostly abandoned, though he did find and pocket a half-eaten apple. As badly as he wanted it, Karina would need it more.

The ship was too crude for a wheel. Instead, it had a tiller attached to a large rudder. A vessel like this was meant for rivers and coasts and was only barely seaworthy. It wasn’t so different from his own boat, but it was still pretty alien to him.

“Not as alien as the rest of this benighted world, though,” he muttered to himself as he opened the door to the below-decks area.

Markez stood there for several seconds then, steeling himself against the darkness below and straining his hearing before he descended the stairs one creaking step at a time. The hold was full of barrels and boxes. So much so he was sure they’d find something edible if they looked hard enough. That wasn’t what caught his attention, though.

Beyond the sloshing of water and the rhythmic slap of the waves, there was something else in that inky darkness. It took him a long moment before he could figure out quite what it was, but when he recognized it as sobbing, he said, “You can come out. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Nothing happened at first, but eventually, a head bobbed up briefly from behind a crate before disappearing again. The only light down here came from the distant moon and stars as it filtered through the cracks in the deck above. It wasn’t enough light to see any details, but it was plain to see from the shape that the head belonged to a child.

He repressed a sigh. The very last thing he needed right now was more hands to hold and mouths to feed. What was he going to do, though? Loot their ship - steal their last crust of bread to feed the kids he’d brought with him and let the ones down here starve?

Lots of people were moving around now, but in the darkness, counting them was impossible. So, he didn’t try.

“I want to see the adults or whoever’s in charge upstairs. Now!” As he finished, Markez let a little annoyance seep into his voice. That was okay. It was okay to be annoyed at whoever was in charge here. He was old enough to be a little crabby. That was his right.

Slowly, several people followed him up onto the deck: a dandy, a street rat that he thought was a boy but who turned out to be a girl and a maid that might or might not have been the mother to a couple of the children clutching at her skirts.

“If someone is in charge around here, then it is I, Dian Larrintin, the third, but you may address me as—” the fob said with a minor bow.

“How about we skip the formalities for now. I’ll call you Dian, you can call me captain, and we can get to the part about what your plan was going to be.” Markez enjoyed twisting the knife when dealing with people like this, but the shock on the noble’s face made it that much better.

He was apoplectic for a few seconds, but eventually, the girl relayed what had happened. She skipped the worst bits on account of the children, but it was easy enough to read between the lines. When the dead had attacked, everyone panicked. Those who could flee by ship did, but in their case, they were just a few stragglers who happened to get on this tub with no idea how to use it. They’d spent half a letting the current drag them from shore, but the most productive thing they’d done so far was tangle all of the rigging before giving up.

“Well, we can’t just stay here,” Markez said finally.

No matter how many times he asked the group what they were going to do, they just told him more about what they’d done up until now, and since that obviously wasn’t working, he was going to take command.

“But we don’t know how to use the ship—” Lara answered softly.

“Then you’ll learn,” Markez said curtly, interrupting her. He wasn’t any more pleased than she was that his crew was about to consist of a sniviling nobleman, a girl, and a handful of boys, but it was that or die, so he was going to do what he had to do.

“We’re going to get these sails up, and we’ll make for the river before—” he started to explain.

“But the Oroza is—” Dian started to explain, but Markez ignored him.

“We all know exactly what the Oroza is. It’s dangerous, and if you say anything worse than that in front of the children, I will toss you off this boat,” Markez shot back gruffly. He’d give anything to have Brannon back right now. “It’s dangerous, but it’s our only way. You can’t drink seawater, and those barrels down in the hold will only last for a few days.”

The argument continued after that, but it changed nothing, and slowly but surely, everyone fell into line. After that, he got everyone and everything of value from his little boat before they tied it to the stern rail, and then he showed his tiny crew what he needed from them if they were going to set this sail.

What would have taken three trained men five minutes to get the sail up and another five to get underway. With this lot, though, he had to spend an hour teaching them basic skills while they cleaned up the mess they’d made of the rigging.

That was fine. It was a good time for Karina to drink her fill and then spend some time with Adrianna, rounding up all of the children. He’d count just how many of them there were after they were making way. While he was at it, Markez made a mental note that he’d also need to inventory their supplies, their weapons, and anything else that they might have on board.

He tried to continue to be grumpy about it, but the way that Karina’s face had lit up when he’d give her that half-eaten fruit cheered him up too much to keep it up. They were going to make it. They were going to be okay.

Ch. 92 - A New Dawn

It was Tenebroum’s greatest triumph, exceeding even the ring or its subversion of the Temple of Dawn to catch a god in its trap. To the darkness, there could be no greater victory than a night that lasted forever. However, on the seventh day, after a week of darkness, light once again appeared on the horizon.

At first, it was a swarm of falling stars that pelted the region in a tiny lightshow that lasted for less than an hour. The Lich ignored it, treating it as nothing more than an astronomical oddity that was not as important as its slumber, even as it bombarded cities and fields with little fireballs. As far as the darkness was concerned, it did nothing but add a little fiery devastation to the icy grip that was even now beginning to seize the world.

Even as that was finishing, though, the smudge of light on the horizon stayed fixed in its position. It looked like the sun was about to rise once more on a world that had given up on that oft-repeated miracle. In this case, though, it was the wrong horizon.

The sun was supposed to rise in the east and set in the west, but on that morning, there was a glow on the horizon to the southeast. It was little more than a blue-gray stain and not even enough to force all but the Lich’s most sensitive shadow creations to seek shelter. Still, it brightened, minute by minute, and eventually colored the sky in reds and pinks that made the whole world hold its breath in hope.

It was that hope that was the real problem. Tenebroum had long worked around the limitations of the light that the sun had forced on it. The fear, though - it was a constant and refreshing source of energy that seemed from the world to where it slept, curled in the bottom of its lair, and the moment that the cursed sun rose, that steady river of terror dried up almost immediately.

The light that this new sun shed was wan and thin compared to Siddrim’s light, and it only glowed at perhaps a tenth of the former God of Light’s brightness. Still, that was enough to finally force the retreat of the goblins, some of the undead abominations, and all the other foul evils that had plagued humanity unchecked for a week.

It was also enough to force Tenebroum to stir as a few of its slower servants vaporized into a painful flurry of fire and ash.

“Impossible!” the Lich raged as it tried to understand how this could possibly be happening.

Even more confusing was that the light shone everywhere in its territories except for the vast circle at its heart. There, past the line demarcated by its binding ring, the light simply ceased to shine. It was the one spot in the whole world that kept its shroud of eternal night while the rest of the world was flooded with the thin rays that might be more normal on a cold winter morning.

A few hours later, a second sun started to rise from the southwest, which was even more baffling, but that insanity only increased when, a few hours after that, a third began to rise from the northwest. It was as if the whole world had gone mad, and for once, it was not the Lich’s doing.

The second was only a little dimmer than the first, and it was a dull grey instead of slightly blue. The third one, though, it was twice as bright as the first one and glowed an angry red. Now the sky was lit by three different small orbs instead of one large one!

It was an impossible thing, but it was undeniable! Each of them was only a quarter of the brightness of the old sun, and together, they cast crazy shadows in every direction as they all chose different spots to rise and different paths across the sky. However, no matter how much the Lich might hate such an eventuality, it could not deny that it was happening.

It had not destroyed the light. It had only broken it, dimming it in the process. However, despite all of its efforts, it had not been snuffed completely. For hours, the Lich was inconsolable with rage, and it could only conclude that the stars that it had seen escaping the body of the dying god had somehow grown into these abominations.

That raised more questions than answers. How could they have grown so much larger in the meantime? Why did they travel separately along their own paths? Why had they waited so long to reappear? Where were the other two that it had seen?

Tenebroum would have liked nothing more than to hunt down these fragile stars and devour them to complete what it had started, but it was much too weak for that. Even now, as its anger faded, it grew lethargic once more. The Lich was stronger than it had ever been, but the darkness was still weak from devouring so much light, and that weighed on it. It had given all that it had saved for decades to its most recent conquest, and it would be some time before it was ready to murder another god or perhaps even a godling.

No, it realized that for the time being, it would have to console itself with devouring even more of mankind instead. It would feast on them and spread its bloodshed in wide and expanding arcs to regain its strength. To the north and east. Though there were half a dozen major cities between Siddrim and the capital. In time, a year or two at most, it would claim all of them and, with them, the crown and the throne of the vast human kingdoms. Only once that was done would it turn its eyes skyward toward larger, more ambitious goals.

None of that would be a problem, though. Only the light was a problem, and its very existence galled it. By the time the first of the suns had begun to set, the icicles everywhere but in its shadowy kingdom were beginning to melt, and the snow had retreated to the shadows of nearby buildings for protection.

It was only when the first two suns had set, and the third was nearing the horizon that it got another nasty surprise, though. A fourth sun, which was pale white, rose slowly to replace the first two, making the day even longer than it had been before.

“The darkness was supposed to reign forever!” it bellowed in frustration, making the walls shake, even in the depths of its lair, as it understood that, in some ways, it had lost as much as it had gained.

This new light was much weaker, of course, and most of its constructs could fight beneath the light of a single one of these lesser suns without issue. Still, it was the very principle of the thing. It had planned this for so long and ripped out the very heart of the Lord of Light, and yet somehow, he lived on as lesser aspects of himself. It was utterly infuriating. Somehow, its enemies had managed to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, but Tenebroum would find ways to make them regret it.

For the next few hours, the Lich lived in dread that a fifth sun would rise next and deny it a true night altogether, but that did not seem to be the case. Instead, when the fourth pale sun finished its arc, there was at last true darkness, but it only lasted for five hours before the first sun started to rise all over again.

The Lich set a dozen scholars to the task of studying this new phenomenon so that they could understand what exactly was happening and chart a new rhythm for the celestial bodies. That, in turn, instantly set off a chain of new instruments that would need to be built so that they could better monitor the sky. That would require all manner of instruments, apparently, including lenses and mirrors, which were not a craft that it had mastered previously.

It was beneath Tenebroum to worry about such trivium, though, and instead, it delegated the tasks to its craftsmen and the sages that would ultimately need the strange implements. It would unravel this mystery, and then it would figure out how to slay the new lights one by one if it had to, even if it had to tear its shadow dragon down to the bones and rebuild it from scratch so that it could fly high enough to devour one of the wandering stars.

. . .

In the days that followed, it learned that the schedule of the new stars seemed to be somewhat fixed. This resulted in only about five hours of true day and five hours of true night, with all of the rest of the time falling somewhere in between the two. Ultimately, it was still a boon for the Lich’s forces. They could march and fight for about half the day now without suffering too many ill effects. This helped with its ongoing extermination efforts of the nearby cities that its elite forces were in the process of slaughtering.

Its more shadowy creatures, on the other hand, were severely limited. The dark rider and the shadow dragon were almost useless for now, and its ferryman wasn’t much better off. There was only so far that even its magical barge could get in the nighttime mists when it only had five hours to work with. It was unsure what it could do about that for the time being except alter its plans to account for their losses in its plans and move its terrible swamp dragon and its earth titan into more important roles in their place.

It was a shame, of course, because despite its clumsy nature, the shadow drake had done more damage to Siddrimar than the other three of its prime evils combined. That was doubly true once the priest’s damnable lights had finally gone dark shortly after the death of their god. Its ability to simply make a unit disappear or a wall crumble as solid stone dissolved into air was nothing short of extraordinary.

Originally, the Lich had hoped to turn its dark machinations next on the dwarvish All-Father, but those hopes would have to be set aside for the foreseeable future. It had not yet suffered any repercussions from that race of stone dwellers yet. However, the darkness was not about to open another front on its war with the gods until it understood exactly what it was that had happened here, and by the best estimates of the scholar spirits that it had set to the task, it would require at least a full year to monitor the patterns and discover how they affected the seasons and the tides as well.

The only consolation that the Lich could think of was that this would baffle and terrify the mortal realms even more than it had frustrated the Lich. How would they know when to set sail or farm their lands in this strange new world? How would they determine when to reap and sow when the wandering stars seemed to move at random through the sky?

A new day had dawned on the world, it was true, but the Lich would work hard to see that the men who dwelled under the new and untrustworthy lights saw them as a curse as much as a blessing.